Xampp 8.2.0-0 on Mint 21.1 VeraCinnamon 5.6.7 x64 issue with localhost

Pulling my hair out with this one :( Lampp is working fine on Mint 21 on my Workstation but I can´t for the life of me work out why I can´t get it to work properly on my HP laptop (for working elsewhere). I installed it the same and edited the conf files the same but it when I start Lampp, the apache server and Mysql server start up okay but the browser is unable to connect to localhost. In the error message, the localhost has been changed to www.localhost for some reason (although, it's the same on the workstation - which works fine). On the workstation, I have also edited the dashboard to include a link to the websites folder under "www" as there didn´t appear to be any way to load the websites from the dashboard. All this has been the major nightmare in the move from windows to Mint. Any help/suggestions greatly appreciated. Thanks