Your "Windows Professionals" should be fired. If re-imaging is the only thing they can do to fix that then they are no more knowledgeable than your boss. I've worked with a guy who's thought process was the same. "Well, I couldn't figure it out in 20 seconds so I guess I better re-image it". He was a help desk tech for 13 years (13 years!!!) and was finally fired when new management came in and saw how worthless he was.
And I'm sorry but Linux does not "work just as well as Windows". I support both in my environment as well as about 70 Macs. Honestly, they are all no different from each other. It's a different presentation. Bad or improperly installed drivers on any one of them will break it. Software available for one isn't available for the other. I personally run Mac OS X 10.7, Windows 7, and Ubuntu (Classic session of course) on my MacBook Pro 2011. If only my AMD graphics and Broadcom 4331 were supported under Ubuntu without having to patch firmware and compile it from source.
Yes, Windows can be administered much easier than the rest. That's the fucking point! I'm an admin myself and I like to click things. I'd rather not have to remember a hundred different terminal commands to do something that can be accomplished with a few clicks on a Windows box. GPO's are fucking fantastic by the way.