On a Windows 7 Enterprise machine, I made a fresh install of Erlang 17.4 and RabbitMQ 3.4.3 x64. The installation was successful and uneventful.

I have not yet tried to create my first queue or exchange, but I already see trouble. This problem is similar to another SO post, but that other post appears to involve clustering, which I don't have. Furthermore, that other poster can circumvent his issue by restarting the RabbitMQ service; that approach does not work for me.

My "nodedown" problem is evident at the RabbitMQ command prompt:

C:\Program Files (x86)\RabbitMQ Server\rabbitmq_server-3.4.3\sbin>rabbitmqctl status Status of node rabbit@TPAJ05421843 ...
Error: unable to connect to node rabbit@TPAJ05421843: nodedown

DIAGNOSTICS

attempted to contact: [rabbit@TPAJ05421843]

rabbit@TPAJ05421843:
* connected to epmd (port 4369) on TPAJ05421843
* epmd reports: node 'rabbit' not running at all
other nodes on TPAJ05421843: ['RabbitMQ']
* suggestion: start the node

current node details:
- node name: 'rabbitmqctl-19884@TPAJ05421843'
- home dir: H:\
- cookie hash: PD4QQCYrf0TME9vIko3Xuw==

Based on the above, I chose to check the status of the node explicitly named 'RabbitMQ'. I get this:

C:\Program Files (x86)\RabbitMQ Server\rabbitmq_server-3.4.3\sbin>rabbitmqctl -n RabbitMQ status
Status of node 'RabbitMQ@TPAJ05421843' ...
Error: unable to connect to node 'RabbitMQ@TPAJ05421843': nodedown

DIAGNOSTICS

attempted to contact: ['RabbitMQ@TPAJ05421843']

RabbitMQ@TPAJ05421843:
* connected to epmd (port 4369) on TPAJ05421843
* epmd reports node 'RabbitMQ' running on port 59301
* TCP connection succeeded but Erlang distribution failed
* suggestion: hostname mismatch?
* suggestion: is the cookie set correctly?

current node details:
- node name: 'rabbitmqctl-23076@TPAJ05421843'
- home dir: H:\
- cookie hash: PD4QQCYrf0TME9vIko3Xuw==

Ok, this is barely better since at least it acknowledges 'RabbitMQ' running on port 59301. But what the heck could it mean that "Erlang distribution failed"?

When I try to research this topic, I found articles saying "be sure you have matched cookies." Based on that I found this article, which claims the "cookie mismatch" does not pertain to me, because I have not created (nor intend to create) a RabbitMQ cluster.

What should I do?

I had this same problem today. There were no cookie or firewall problems and windows reported that the service was running successfully. This is what finally fixed it:

1. Run RabbitMQ sbin command prompt as administrator.
2. Run "rabbitmq-service remove"
3. Run "rabbitmq-service install"

For some reason the service set up by the installer did not configure several registry entries. Running this set them correctly and allowed the service to run.

One thing I noticed was that before I did this, there was no description of the service in the Windows Services view. After installing with the rabbitmq-service command, the description was visible. This might be a quick indicator if you are having the same problem.