Images / videos / embeds disappeared Localhost install (to practice and learn)

Hello.

INTRO
I am taking a course which includes learning WordPress and creating a simple theme.
We created a theme in Notepad++.
The index.php displays blogposts.
The page.php is the standard header footer body sidebar template.
Worked fine with basic dummy content.

FILES
Wordpress stored in the XAMPP htdocs folder. I access admin with https://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/ and my pages with https://localhost/wordpress/ .

PLUGINS
Installed (no issues)
Aksimet anti spam
WP Smush
Easy Google Fonts
Contact Form 7

Uninstalled (deactivated and deleted)
WP Forms
Forminator
Asgaros forum

I deleted the pages on which the extra forms (wp forms and forminator) and discussion forum were, and removed the plugins.

Then I got the error
compilation failed: quantifier does not follow a repeatable item at offset \wp-includes\class-wp.php on line 223

So I read https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-turn-off-php-errors-in-wordpress/ and turned off PHP errors.

I had random images in my site. I finished styling the site and turned to add proper content.
Noticed images don’t show. YouTube or iframe embeds don’t show up.
There is a space where there should be an image.
It shows in the blog post, the image shows in Media Library.
But not on the page or the start page or blog post view.

Image space is there. YouTube shows as a link.
This happened during styling or around the plugins saga, as I didn’t pay attention to content until I was done styling layout colors etc.

Not sure when it happened, but no images show up.

I submitted a ‘text only website for better load speed and accessibility for screen readers’ to my teacher for now. But I need to get images working.

The asgaros forum seems to have issues https://www.asgaros.de/support/topic/php-warnings/
I had added it as an extra feature to my assignment.