I wouldn't even sweat trying to figure this out. I have been trying to get Laravel to work on my Windows machine for over 24 hours already now every hour added decreases my excitement about trying this thing out. I managed to get Laravel to work in about ten minutes with Xampp. So to anyone asking "why not use Homestead?" This is precisely why. Super huge thanks to the guy who created Laragon for this purpose, I wish I would have seen it earlier. This would have honestly been discouraging enough to consider Ruby on Rails or Django instead. But alas, thanks to a handy video I found, I was able to get it going. I look forward to trying Laravel still.