How do I fix this issue in IntelliJ IDEA? "Unable to start daemon process"

Hey everyone,

I have read the other posts regarding this matter. Unfortunately, I am unable to understand one of them, and the other two relate to Android Studio, not IntelliJ IDEA.

I downloaded Gradle for IntelliJ and installed. When I hit the Debug button in IntelliJ to debug my project, I get the following error:

BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 5s
1 actionable task: 1 executed
Unable to start the daemon process.
This problem might be caused by incorrect configuration of the daemon.
For example, an unrecognized jvm option is used.
Please refer to the user guide chapter on the daemon at The Gradle Daemon - Gradle User Guide Version 4.0
Please read the following process output to find out more:

Java HotSpot™ Client VM warning: ignoring option MaxPermSize=256m; support was removed in 8.0
ERROR: transport error 202: connect failed: Connection refused
ERROR: JDWP Transport dt_socket failed to initialize, TRANSPORT_INIT(510)
JDWP exit error AGENT_ERROR_TRANSPORT_INIT(197): No transports initialized [debugInit.c:750]

Disconnected from the target VM, address: ‘xxxxxxxxxxxxxx’, transport: ‘socket’
10:28:00 AM: Task execution finished ‘run’.

Can anyone advise on how to go about handling this? I created a Stack Overflow post and even gave it a Bounty, but no one has been able to help. My IT coworkers examined the ports and determined this problem is not caused by our firewall.

Thanks in advance!