Unable to connect to EC2 Windows server.

Question

Hi,

We have a windows server we are not able to access using the same access credentials we once were able to. It was created and managed by a former colleague and we just have the .pem file and its derivative password. We are trying to access it through RDP and after entering the username and password it keeps saying 'The credentials that were used to connect to  did not work. Please enter new credentials. the logon attempt failed'.
We made sure the inbound rule lets RDP access to the respective IP addresses. 
Can someone clue me in what might be the underlying cause for the issue?

Answer

If all else fails you can take a snapshot and relaunch from it, providing new credentials you know are definitely OK.

It would be good to move to a more secure access mthod though - Fleet Manager RDP.  The instance needs to have the SSM Agent running (which modern AMIs should have), and needs appropriate IAM role permissions.  See https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/fleet-setup-iam.html.

Answer

Hi, did you check the public key configured in the EC2 instance to validate that it corresponds  to your .pem file for the private key ?
I would start there to ensure that the EC2 is what I believe it is.

After that, you can try a console access to EC2 instance: a Windows terminal will be opened if successful. If it succeeds, this will validate your key and then it will boil down to an RDP config issue.

Unable to connect to EC2 Windows server.

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