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.

In desperation 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 4:40PM 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.

Update: At 9PM still no Windows password. Posted question on Amazon support.

Update: 7:45AM Friday, still no Windows password.

Update: 9:30AM, still no luck. Launched a second instance. Maybe this one will do better?

Update: 3:40PM, got the password!

 3/3/2011; 4:39:42 PM.   .

I wish there were a web service that had a simple XML and/or JSON interface that made it easy for a user to establish a username and password.

Such a service, if it had reasonable terms of service, could clean up among developers who want to invest in a net outside of Twitter, Facebook and Apple.

Why doesn't Amazon have a simple authentication service? This person says he or she is bullmancuso. Great, is this his password? Yes or no. That's all we need.

How about Visa or Mastercard. A bank?

I suspect we don't have it because of the confusion about OAuth. Shame cause it's desperately needed.

 3/3/2011; 2:21:33 PM.   .