AWS [EC2] - I can't get my Windows password

Question

I lost my.PEM key. I created an image of my instance and created a new key, executed the new instance, however, when trying to recover my password it shows the message "Please wait at least 4 minutes after launching an instance before trying to retrieve the auto-generated password. ". But it's been 24 hours and nothing.

Has anyone had a similar problem? What can I do?

Answer 1

It sounds like either the password wasnt reset when you restored the ami, or the agent isnt starting up properly so the password isnt being sent to the console.

You can try and use Systems Manager(Session Manager or the Run command) to run PowerShell commands on the instance to create a new user in the administrators group or reset an existing users password. This requires an agent to be preinstalled on the system to work - its normally installed in the aws windows AMI and just requires an IAM instance role for SSM to work.

If you cant connect with SSM you need the agent log files, or possibly the sysprep log files off the disk to figure out whats going wrong. You would access those by attaching the boot disk of your instance to a new temporary instance (make a note of the config before detaching the disk, you must use the same settings when reattaching the disk, doesnt matter where you attach the disk on the temp instance).