Well I guess I'm seeing that re-imaging really is the way to go. Still doesn't make me like it

I can't remember exactly what your company does, but where I work we are constantly reimaging machines. Whether we're migrating OS or even if they just have a problem. For most users this isn't a problem since they save nearly everything to the network as opposed to the hard drive.

I'm a programmer working for the governement as a contractor. The big problem with what I do is that I have a TON of third party libraries, components, etc. that are all necessary for various applications that I have to build. My "data" (source code) is all archived, of course, so it will be no big thing to simply get it all from the network. Install all of the third party software necessary for my job is another thing alltogether.

Add to that the fact that no one outside of IT has the rights to install ANY program and everything runs pretty smoothly.

In fact we just had a bout with our IT security people who were going to use sms to uninstall anything that they didn't know what it was. This would have been disasterous as I have so much stuff on my machine that they don't a clue about (all legally purchased by the contract and necessary for my work).

The only non-registered thing I have on my machine is a small program called "empload" I figure if they kill that then I'll be OK. Sometimes I just need to restructure a playlist while I'm working!