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Checking password reset agent operation on a Windows Server VM

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Updated at June 9, 2025

Checking that the agent is installed

  1. Connect to the VM via RDP.

  2. Make sure the agent is installed and running as the yc-guest-agent service:

    Get-Service "yc-guest-agent"

    • If installed and running, the agent will be listed as Running:

      Status   Name               DisplayName
------   ----               -----------
Running  yc-guest-agent     yc-guest-agent

    • If installed but not running, the agent will be listed as Stopped. To run the agent, use this command:

      Start-Service "yc-guest-agent"

      After that, check if the agent is now running.

    • If the agent is not installed, it will not appear in the list. Use this guide to install it.

Checking for agent updates

  1. Connect to the VM via RDP.

  2. Make sure the agent updater is configured and running properly:

    1. Make sure the agent update job is running:

      Get-ScheduledTask "yc-guest-agent-updater" -OutVariable Task

      Result:

      TaskPath           TaskName                          State
--------           --------                          -----
\                  yc-guest-agent-updater            Ready

      The yc-guest-agent-updater job must have the Ready status.

    2. Get information about the most recent job run.

      $Task | Get-ScheduledTaskInfo

      Result:

      LastRunTime        : 3/15/2023 2:39:39 PM
LastTaskResult     : 2147946720
NextRunTime        : 3/20/2023 6:36:36 AM 12:10:10 AM
NumberOfMissedRuns : 0
TaskName           : yc-guest-agent-updater
TaskPath           : \
PSComputerName     :

      If the most recent update was successful, you will see 0 in the LastTaskResult field.

Getting agent logs

You can get password reset agent logs on serial port 4 (COM4) or directly from the agent in PowerShell.

To get logs:

  1. Select the folder the VM belongs to.
  2. Select Compute Cloud.
  3. Click the line with the VM in question.
  4. Go to the Serial port tab.
  5. Select COM4 as your port.
  6. To use the CTRL + F shortcut to search, enable Raw mode in the top-right corner.

By default, the CLI uses the folder specified when creating the profile. To change the default folder, use the yc config set folder-id <folder_ID> command. You can also set a different folder for any specific command using the --folder-name or --folder-id parameter.

Run the following command:

yc compute instance get-serial-port-output <VM_name> --port 4 > output.txt

The logs will be saved to a file named output.txt.

  1. Stop the agent:

    Stop-Service "yc-guest-agent"

  2. Restart the agent with the required logging level as specified in the --log-level parameter. Here is an example:

    & "C:\Program Files\Yandex.Cloud\Guest Agent\guest-agent.exe" start --log-level debug

To get the serial port output, use the getSerialPortOutput REST API method for the Instance resource or the InstanceService/GetSerialPortOutput gRPC API call. Set port to 4.

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Recovering access to a VM
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Installing the agent