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!