Corpnet joined Windows VM: cannot access anymore with warning agent status is not ready

The "Agent Not Ready" status indicates that the in-guest Azure VM Guest Agent has lost communication with the Azure platform. Since operations like Reset Password, Reapply, and Redeploy rely on a healthy guest agent to push configuration into the VM, they will not take effect until agent connectivity is restored. This explains why the actions you tried did not yield results.

Next Steps – Requesting Your Confirmation

To proceed efficiently, kindly help me with the following:

1. Recent changes (last 24–48 hours):

• Any Windows Updates / patching applied?
• Any changes to NSG, UDR, DNS, Firewall, or routing?

Is the VM Domain-joined / Entra-joined? If yes, was there any password policy or AD-related change?

Any disk encryption (ADE/BitLocker) activity?

2. Diagnostic access – please enable (if not already):

Boot Diagnostics (Screenshot + Serial Log)

Serial Console access - This will allow us to inspect the guest OS state directly and confirm whether the OS is fully booted and whether the WindowsAzureGuestAgent / RdAgent services are running.

Based on the diagnostics, we will proceed with the most suitable option:

• Option A – In-guest fix via Serial Console: Restart the Guest Agent services and validate connectivity to the Azure WireServer (168.63.129.16).
• Option B – Offline OS Disk Repair: Using the Azure VM Repair Extension, this will attach the OS disk to a rescue VM and run Microsoft-supported recovery scripts to: Repair the Guest Agent , Reset the local admin password and Fix any boot/profile-level corruption
• Option C – OS Disk Swap (validation): If required, we can snapshot the OS disk and attach it to a test VM to isolate whether the issue is at the guest OS layer or the platform layer.

Note: As a precaution, I would recommend taking a snapshot of the OS disk before we begin any repair activity, to ensure data safety.

Ok I got locked out because I typed the psw too many times. The serial console doesn't work, how can I get to the enter the key?

Root Causes of the issue could be

Step 1: Check Guest Agent Service Status

Powershell

===========

Get-Service WindowsAzureGuestAgent | Select-Object Status, DisplayName

Step 2: Start the Agent Service if Stopped

Start-Service WindowsAzureGuestAgent

Step 3: Check agent log for errors

Get-Content "C:\WindowsAzure\Logs\WaAppAgent.log" -Tail 50

Look for:

Connection timeouts

SSL/TLS errors

Network unreachable

Authentication failures

4. Verify network connectivity.

Test-NetConnection -ComputerName "blob.core.windows.net" -Port 443

5. Restart VM

Sometimes a VM restart resolves transient agent issues: ------------->>

Restart-Computer -Force

Since the VM is now locked out due to multiple failed password attempts and the VM Agent is in a “Not Ready” state, reset actions from the portal won’t work because they rely on a healthy agent to push changes inside the VM. - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/azure/virtual-machines/windows/windows-azure-guest-agent

If Serial Console is also not accessible, it usually indicates either boot diagnostics/serial access prerequisites are not met or access is blocked (for example, due to storage firewall restrictions or permissions). - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/azure/virtual-machines/windows/serial-console-windows

Recommended next steps

1. Try Serial Console access again (from Azure Portal only)
2. Ensure boot diagnostics is enabled
3. Confirm you have Contributor (or higher) access
4. Check if boot diagnostics storage has firewall restrictions

If Serial Console is still not working (most reliable path now):

Proceed with VM Repair (offline method) - This will attach the OS disk to a recovery VM

From there we can:

• Reset the local admin password
• Repair Guest Agent
• Fix any OS-level issue blocking access

Note - Optional validation is to Take a snapshot of the OS disk before repair (recommended for safety)

Just checking if provided response was helpful! please let me know if you have any queries.