Hey @rtyrell, Welcome to the Local Community Forums!
It sounds like Local is having some issues with installing alongside XAMPP. What’s likely happening is that they are both trying to use the same port on the laptop.
The error does mention something about not being able to edit the Hosts file. This usually is due to some sort of antivirus software, or security setting. Can you try temporarily disabling any antivirus software and then create a new Local site?
If that doesn’t help, Can you please provide your local-lightning.log file? See this Community Forum post for instructions on how to do so:
Note that since you are using the most recent version of Local, the file will be named local-lightning.log and not local-by-flywheel.log as is mentioned in the above FAQ.