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copied!<p>Basically what's happening is that the existing administrator password (and other user authentication information) for Windows is only valid in the original instance, and can't be used on the new "hardware" that you're launching the AMI on (even though it's all virtualized).</p> <p>This is why RDP connections will fail to newly launched instances, as will any attempts to retrieve the administrator password. Unfortunately you have no choice but to shut down the new instances you've been trying to connect to because you won't be able to do anything with them.</p> <p>For various reasons the Windows administrator password cannot be preserved when running a snapshot of the operating system on different hardware (even virtualized hardware) - this is a big part of the reason why technologies like Active Directory exist, so that user authentication information is portable between machines and networks.</p> <p>It sounds like you did all the steps necessary to get this working except for one - you never took any steps to cause a new password to be assigned to your newly-launched instances based on the original AMI you created.</p> <p>To fix this, BEFORE turning your instance into a custom AMI that can be used to launch new instances, you need to (in the original instance) run the Ec2ConfigService Settings tool (found in the start menu when remoted into the original instance using RDP), and enable the option to generate a new password on next reboot. Save this setting change.</p> <p>Then when you do create an AMI from the original instance, and use that AMI to launch new instances, they will each boot up to your custom Windows image but will choose their own random administrator password.</p> <p>At this point you can go to your ec2 dashboard and retrieve the newly-generated password for the new instance based on the old AMI, and you'll also be able to download the RDP file used to connect to it. </p> <p>One additional note is that Amazon warns that it can take upwards of 30 minutes for the retrieval of an administrator password after launching a new instance, however in my previous experience I've never had to wait more than a few minutes to be able to get it.</p>

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