diff --git a/Aws/Ec2/InstanceMetadata.hs b/Aws/Ec2/InstanceMetadata.hs
--- a/Aws/Ec2/InstanceMetadata.hs
+++ b/Aws/Ec2/InstanceMetadata.hs
@@ -3,7 +3,6 @@
 import           Control.Applicative
 import           Control.Exception
 import           Control.Failure
-import           Control.Monad.Trans.Resource
 import qualified Data.ByteString.Lazy as L
 import qualified Data.ByteString.Lazy.Char8 as B8
 import           Data.ByteString.Lazy.UTF8 as BU
@@ -16,19 +15,19 @@
 
 instance Exception InstanceMetadataException
 
-getInstanceMetadata :: HTTP.Manager -> String -> String -> ResIO L.ByteString
+getInstanceMetadata :: HTTP.Manager -> String -> String -> IO L.ByteString
 getInstanceMetadata mgr p x = do req <- HTTP.parseUrl ("http://169.254.169.254/" ++ p ++ '/' : x)
                                  HTTP.responseBody <$> HTTP.httpLbs req mgr
 
-getInstanceMetadataListing :: HTTP.Manager -> String -> ResIO [String]
+getInstanceMetadataListing :: HTTP.Manager -> String -> IO [String]
 getInstanceMetadataListing mgr p = map BU.toString . B8.split '\n' <$> getInstanceMetadata mgr p ""
 
-getInstanceMetadataFirst :: HTTP.Manager -> String -> ResIO L.ByteString
+getInstanceMetadataFirst :: HTTP.Manager -> String -> IO L.ByteString
 getInstanceMetadataFirst mgr p = do listing <- getInstanceMetadataListing mgr p
                                     case listing of
                                       [] -> failure (MetadataNotFound p)
                                       (x:_) -> getInstanceMetadata mgr p x
 
-getInstanceMetadataOrFirst :: HTTP.Manager -> String -> Maybe String -> ResIO L.ByteString
+getInstanceMetadataOrFirst :: HTTP.Manager -> String -> Maybe String -> IO L.ByteString
 getInstanceMetadataOrFirst mgr p (Just x) = getInstanceMetadata mgr p x
 getInstanceMetadataOrFirst mgr p Nothing = getInstanceMetadataFirst mgr p
diff --git a/README.org b/README.org
--- a/README.org
+++ b/README.org
@@ -90,6 +90,10 @@
 
 ** 0.8 series
 
+- 0.8.6
+  - move Instance metadata functions out of ResourceT to remove problem with exceptions-0.5
+    (this makes a fresh install of aws on a clean system possible again)
+
 - 0.8.5
   - compatibility with case-insensitive 1.2
   - support for V4 signatures
diff --git a/aws.cabal b/aws.cabal
--- a/aws.cabal
+++ b/aws.cabal
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 Name:                aws
-Version:             0.8.5
+Version:             0.8.6
 Synopsis:            Amazon Web Services (AWS) for Haskell
 Description:         Bindings for Amazon Web Services (AWS), with the aim of supporting all AWS services. To see a high level overview of the library, see the README at <https://github.com/aristidb/aws/blob/master/README.org>.
 Homepage:            http://github.com/aristidb/aws
@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@
 Source-repository this
   type: git
   location: https://github.com/aristidb/aws.git
-  tag: 0.8.5
+  tag: 0.8.6
 
 Source-repository head
   type: git