Had an unfortunate reboot caused by circumstances out of my control and upon startup, getting the same error from plex. Running 1.25.6.5577 . Preferences.xml is now a completely empty file. Is this a widespread issue?
edit: resolved by moving the empty Preferences.xml file out of the default dir, running setup again using 32400/web. Thankfully this did not alter plex data for libraries at all, just the home screen.