Ok, I 100% have resolved this, which is not an issue with this plugin, but how xammp works.
The solution involves changing config.php to another name, then editing home.php to reflect that change, then copying the whole directory into the pear directory of php in xampp.
I won’t pretend to know why this worked but once I figured out that this plugin was looking inside a file called config.php in the pear directory and not the one included in this package, this work around struck me as a possibility and I have now got this plugin working in this environment.
Thanks,
Love this plugin!