So we’re finally upgrading to XP at my office- except that we’re not upgrading. They’re going to wipe my machine and install XP fresh. Of course they’ll save all of my data, but configuration is up to me. This means at lest a few days of downtime as I reconfigure all of my compliers, version control, components, etc. and even then unless I go back and test every application I’ve built in the last year I can’t be certain I’ve gotten my environment set back up properly. So I’m pretty steamed at the moment. I’ve finally got some work to do after months of inactivity, and now I’m going to have to stop and start re-installing software!

So my question is this: is this a standard thing in a large operation or is this as unreasonable as it feels? At my last job we were a small company and no one would think of suspending productivity so we could wipe our hard drives and put on a new OS.

I’m being told that 2000->XP causes problems without a fresh install. So perhaps I’m boiling over for no reason, perhaps I live in a fantasy world where you shouldn’t have to ever re-configure every piece of software that you use on a daily basis.