SOLVED: Network Location Awareness Service – The Dependency Service Or Group Failed To Start

When working on a Windows Server 2016 for a client in Houston I noticed a bang on the network so I opened the Network and Sharing Center to find

The Dependency Service Or Group Failed To Start

After some investigation I found

Error 1068 – The Dependency Service or Group Failed To Start

Which lead to seeing which services are dependent:

Then I checked each of the dependent services and found that the DHCP client had been set to DISABLED.  The server was correctly using a static IP address but the DHCP service is still required to be enabled, so I set DHCP to STARTUP TYPE = AUTOMATIC and then manually started it.

I tried to start the Network Location Awareness service again and this time it errored out with

Error 1079 The account specified for this service is different from the account specified for other services running in the same process

 

The solution to error 1079 was to set click the LOGON tab and set this NLA service to run using the Network Service but that was problematic because I did not have the password for the Network Service.  Fortunately the password is blank / null / empty:

At this point I was able to start the Network Location Awareness service and and the Network and Sharing Center was working fine.

If you want more information on Error 1079 and LOCALSERVICE, you will find THIS Microsoft article useful.