We have used a cw CO2 laser to study the effects of rapidly annealing HgTe-based alloys. Both as-grown and thermally annealed samples of HgCdTe, HgMnTe, HgZnTe, and HgMgTe have been examined for mercury loss and surface damage using energy-dispersive x-ray analysis and optical reflectivity measurements. Small, but systematic differences were found between the asgrown and the thermally annealed samples and among the various materials studied. No degradation of the material at all was observed when the samples were cooled to 77 K and exposed to the laser.