Preparing Windows EC2 instance for AMI creation

Review your EC2 settings. Start>All Programs>EC2Service Settings

Clean your disks. Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk clean

Clear out the bytes from deleted space. sdelete –c C:  and sdelete –c D:  (You can get sdelete from the sysinternals site).

Log off the remote desktop.

Using ElasticFox, right click the running instance and  select “Bundle into an AMI”. The S3 bucket name should be globally unique. Note the bucket name and image name carefully (you’ll need it for the registration step). Keep checking the Bundle Tasks tab of ElasticFox to see when it finishes the bundling.

After that, use the “AMI and Instances” tab to register your new AMI. The manifest file name is of the pattern “bundle/imagename.manifest”.