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EC2 instance takes 24 hours to return a Windows password
Posted by: David Winer RealName(TM)
Posted on: Mar 3, 2011 6:04 PM
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This question is not answered. Answer it to earn points.
I have an AMI that I created from Windows server AMI, that's used in the EC2 for Poets tutorial. It worked really well at first.

I had to launch a new instance a week or so ago, and waited for over an hour and it was still telling me it couldn't get a Windows password for it. I left it running overnight, came back to it 24 hours later, and this time it gave me the password.

Today I got a report from a user that he's seeing the same thing (though he hasn't waited to the 24 hours yet).

I just launched an instance myself, at 3:15PM, and now at 9PM it's still saying no password.

I will, once I get one of these guys to launch, create a fresh AMI and hope that clears the problem. Whatever happened this is really bad. I assumed that the stuff inside the AMI didn't need to be backed up. Bad assumption! :-(

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

Permlink Replies: 6 | Pages: 1 - Last Post: Nov 8, 2013 10:45 PM by: Jimmy Shen
Replies
Re: EC2 instance takes 24 hours to return a Windows password
Posted by: Andrew Bruno
Posted on: Mar 3, 2011 6:26 PM
in response to: David Winer in response to: David Winer
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Helpful
Not sure if related, but I started two windows instances, one was small and the other high, the small took a lot longer (30 mins) to generate the password and be ready for me to log in vs the larger instance which took 15 mins. This was US East zone about 15 days ago.

Out of curiosity what instance size did you choose?
Re: EC2 instance takes 24 hours to return a Windows password
Posted by: David Winer RealName(TM)
Posted on: Mar 3, 2011 7:41 PM
in response to: Andrew Bruno in response to: Andrew Bruno
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It's a small instance.
Re: EC2 instance takes 24 hours to return a Windows password
Posted by: Ted C Howard
Posted on: Mar 3, 2011 7:47 PM
in response to: David Winer in response to: David Winer
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I'm the other user Dave was talking about. My server is a micro instance. I checked it periodically throughout the day. At the 10.5 hour mark I was able to get my password.

For what it's worth, I can start a regular windows 2003 micro instance and have my password in 15-20 minutes.
Re: EC2 instance takes 24 hours to return a Windows password
Posted by: moonshdw8
Posted on: Mar 15, 2011 2:17 PM
in response to: David Winer in response to: David Winer
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Same boat here. I'm going on 8 hours and still no password. I'm wondering if Amazon charges for this time when the system is pretty much inoperable. I'm assuming they do. In either case I think Amazon needs to address this problem.
Re: EC2 instance takes 24 hours to return a Windows password
Posted by: Luke@AWS
Posted on: Mar 16, 2011 8:25 AM
in response to: moonshdw8 in response to: moonshdw8
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We recognize that there has been a small increase in customers reporting issues with obtaining an administrator password after launching a new Windows instance.

We’ve dug into these reports and have identified a couple of edge cases within our systems that can result in this experience. Work is underway to address these issues and is expected to roll out over the next week.

If you launch a new Windows instance and the administrator password is not available within 30 minutes, we recommend that you terminate and re-launch a new instance.
Re: EC2 instance takes 24 hours to return a Windows password
Posted by: Jimmy Shen
Posted on: Nov 8, 2013 10:45 PM
in response to: David Winer in response to: David Winer
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I'm experiencing this same issue. Is there anyway I could work around this?