The demo server should not fall over if email is not configured

First, thank you for this marvelous LMS. I was able to follow the documentation and launch the application locally. It works fine. However, I wanted to test the enrollment functionality. I cannot enroll because the connection is not allowed "No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it". I know that it has nothing to do with the code, but can you please help me figure out how to resolve this issue? I am on windows 10.
Thank you for your help.