How Do You Troubleshoot Desired State Configuration Problems where Actions Are Not Working or Software Is Not Installing?

Problem scenario

You run a Start-DscConfiguration command in PowerShell like this:

Start-DscConfiguration -Path . -Wait -Verbose

You get an error message that the installation failed. The message may say something like this:

Start-DscConfiguration : The computer name was not specified and the configuration directory does not have any configuration files.

CategoryInfo : NotSpecified … ArgumentException
FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.ArgumentException, Microsoft.PowerShell.DesiredStateConfiguration.Commands.StartDscConfigurationCommand

What should you do?

Solution
Is the .mof file in the directory where you ran the above command? You could run "dir" to see if it is there. You could re-run the command to replace the "." with the directory path where the .mof file is.