Installing CiviCRM on Local: Getting Uncaught Exception Thrown
If installed locally, your max_allowed_packet in your .ini file or my.cnf file could be too low. Since it's local, I would set it high and forget it. Something like 100M or 500M should do the trick. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7942154/mysql-error-2006-mysql-server-has-gone-away  or  drupal.org/node/1014172