Fresh Laravel Spark 6 install routes are throwing 404, why is APP_URL not working?

I am developing on a Windows machine running Xampp. Projects go in a folder structure like this;

C:/xampp/htdocs/

This folder has some 20+ Laravel projects in it. They all run without issue. I have a project that needs Spark. I did the install with no issues or errors. However, all of the routes are throwing 404s. Typically I can get to a project like this;

http://localhost/project_name/public

I have set APP_URL in .env and config/app.php to http://localhost. I have also tried to append '/' and '/project_name/public'. Nothing works. All the links (login, register, terms etc.) are pointing to http://localhost/link_name.

The only way I seem to be able to get it to work is to remove the leading '/' from the existing routes. Issue there is the register POST and other built in links in Kiosk etc would all need to be revised.

Clearly that's not the solution. However, I am stumped.

Any ideas what I can try next? Loving the Spark package concept but can't really enjoy it yet.

Thanks!

via Chebli Mohamed