There are times one needs to reset the local admin password on a windows server hosted in AWS.
If this were host in VMware, I would just mount the drive to a linux helper with chntpw, and we could do that with AWS, but if the guest has EC2Config, then we have another option (it will be unless you specifically tried to kill it).
There are tons of other options, this is just one I think is fairly easy.
First step is to stop the instance:
Once stopped, you add the script into userdata
Then put this script in the data (Change PASSWORD to the password you want to use):
<powershell>
$rc = ([adsi]("WinNT://$env:computername/"+((Get-LocalUser)|? {$_.SID.value -like '*-500'}).name)).SetPassword('PASSWORD')
Start-Sleep -Seconds 10
$rc = Stop-Computer
</powershell>
<persist>true</persist>Then start the instance, it should change the password and shutdown – even if it doesn’t shut down, you should and remove that script or it will keep changing the password and make it visable to anyone on that server.