Why is my EC2 Windows instance down with an instance status check failure?

Last updated: 2022-08-05

How to troubleshoot your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Windows instance going down due to an instance status check failure.

Short description

Amazon Web Services (AWS) monitors the health of each EC2 instance with two status checks. An EC2 instance becomes unreachable if a status check fails.

An instance status check failure indicates a problem with the instance, such as:

  • Networking or startup configuration issues
  • Exhausted memory
  • File system issues
  • Failure to boot the operating system
  • Failure to mount volumes correctly
  • Incompatible drivers
  • CPU exhaustion

If both the instance and system status checks fail, then see Why is my EC2 Windows instance down with a system status check failure or status check 0/2?

Resolution

Due to instance status checks likely being caused by issues within the guest operating system, focus your troubleshooting on reviewing the following:

  • Console output
  • System logs
  • Operating system or application error messages

For more information, see Troubleshooting EC2 Windows instances.

Tip: You can also use EC2Rescue for Windows Server to diagnose and troubleshoot issues.

Troubleshoot an unreachable instance

Troubleshooting connecting to your Windows instance

Why is my EC2 Linux instance unreachable and failing one or both of its status checks?

How do I diagnose high CPU utilization on my EC2 Windows instance when my CPU is not being throttled?

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