I have some pictures from when my son was in the hospital, unfortunatley when my computer had crashed the original pics were lost through much searching I was able to find a form of the pics on the harddrive. But they are only thumbnails with the designation of .tmb Zooming just pixelates them(if that's even a word). I want to get these back to a normal size so I'm able to print them as some day I would like him to know what he went through(and put us through when he complains about having to do chores). If there is anyway to do this or any help in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
John

Do you still have the drive?
If so, look online for data recovery, download.com ect...
Some programs will let you search a drive for jpeg files.

the drive has been checked already and the only things they were able to find were the .jpeg files with the designation of .tmb which are the original pictures only in the thumbnail size. Which really sucks. I'm not really good with this digital stuff I guess you would say I'm a two barrel carb in a fuel injection age. That's why I ask here cause there's always someone with the knowledge regaurdless of the topic. I was hoping maybe some one who's really familiar with digital photography may have a knowledge of how to make these pics full sized again or as close as possible.

Checked by who? Taking it to your local computer shop or computer guru is not the way to go. If you really really want this info odds are it is still there on your drive and can be salvaged, but that kind of service usually comes are a fairly steep price. You can usually find ads for data recovery services in the back of the more technical computer rags.

Well, there is a saying in digital photography- "If you don't have a picture you can hold in your hand, you got nothing". At least with film, even with all of it's uncertainties until developed, at least you have the negative. I am a diehard film guy but use digital because of need and ease of transferring files for my business plus it is nice to be able to make sure you "got the shot" instantaneously. So if a file is important I download it from the camera first to my laptop and then my PC. Now I have two copies of it on computers and it is still on the camera for three. Next I make a copy of the file to a CD from each of the computers (two separate CDs). Then and only then, after checking all four saved copies of the file to make sure they work do I delete the original file from the camera. (I store one of the CD copies off site in another location incase of fire. Film should be scanned and a copy stored off site for the same reason.) In fact I am so fanatical about making sure I have the file as the cost of memory cards have come down and the storage capacity has gone up in the last few years I am considering not erasing the original file from the card at all and just buy new cards as needed.

The other big problem with digital is you may have a file today that you store and forget, but when you want to bring up the file five or ten years from now (when the kids you took pictures of are all grown up) will you be able to retrieve it? Just look at history, the eight track tape is memory only a few of us even know and both the cassette tape and VHS are brain dead with the plug pulled; what about the 5-1/4" and 3-1/2" floppies? I bet a lot of you have never even seen one. So what's next, probably the CD that I have my precious files stored on, and even if I go out and buy up a couple of extra CD drives just to have them around for when the one in my computer breaks sometime in the future will I be able to get software to run it after my old hard drive that knows how to communicate with the CD crashes and can not be replaced as technology marches on? You get the picture (no pun intended); if you have a decent hard copy of the picture in hand at least you can scan it and print a new one.

Like I said I am a diehard film guy that likes working in a darkroom to the distinctive smell of fixer, but……

if all you have are .tmb files, then you have nothing but bad luck. You can not "upsize" .tmb files to be full res printable images.

This isno longer a photochop digi phot problem, but rather an IT salvage the hard drive issue.

hate to say it man, but unless you can save the files from the crashed drive, you've got nothing to work with.