title: Why is my Amazon EC2 instance "pending"?
body: <p>I've been evaluating several cloud compute providers, Amazon EC2 among them. I started an instance with a Windows image, and ever since then it's been "pending", for more than 30 minutes now.</p>
  
  <p>Is this a typical amount of wait for an instance to start? This would be highly undesirable for my purpose. Perhaps I started it incorrectly? I couldn't find any info on what "pending" means on Amazon - does anyone here know?</p>