Configure your Amazon EC2 Windows instance
After you've launched a Windows instance, you can log in as an administrator to perform additional configuration for Windows features and system settings. EC2 Windows troubleshooting utilities can help you troubleshoot issues on your instance.
You can configure Windows launch agents and other Windows-specific features as follows.
- Windows launch agents
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Each AWS Windows AMI (and many other AMIs that are available on the AWS Marketplace) includes a Windows launch agent that's pre-configured with default settings. Launch agents perform tasks during instance startup and run if an instance is stopped and later started, or restarted.
- EC2 Fast Launch for Windows
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Every Amazon EC2 Windows instance must go through the standard Windows operating system (OS) launch steps, which include several reboots, and often take 15 minutes or longer to complete. Amazon EC2 Windows Server AMIs that have the EC2 Fast Launch feature enabled complete some of those steps and reboots in advance to reduce the time it takes to launch an instance.
Note
Amazon Elastic Graphics for Windows instances reached end of life on January 8, 2024. For workloads that require graphics acceleration, we recommend that you use an accelerated instance type. For more information, see the instance type specifications for Accelerated computing in the Amazon EC2 Instance Types Guide.
Windows-specific system settings
The following list includes some system settings that apply only for Windows operating systems:
- Change the Windows Administrator password
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When you connect to a Windows instance, you must specify a user account and password that has permission to access the instance. The first time that you connect to an instance, you must use the Administrator account and provide the default password. When you connect to an instance the first time, we recommend that you change the Administrator password from its default value.
- Add Windows System components
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Windows Server operating systems include many optional components. Including all optional components in each AWS Windows Server AMI is not practical. Instead, we provide installation media EBS snapshots that have the necessary files to configure or install components on your Windows instance.
- Install WSL on Windows
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Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a free download that you can install on your Windows instance. By installing WSL, you can run native Linux command line tools directly on your Windows instance and use the Linux tools for scripting, alongside your traditional Windows desktop. You can easily swap between Linux and Windows on a single Windows instance, which you might find useful in a development environment.
