When I try to access the features in the backend lunder everything under the configurations menu, I get this error:
500 - An error has occurred.
String could not be parsed as XML

Is there anything I can do to fix this.

Hi, Mark.

Yes, try this solution:

Step 1 : Disable the jomsocialupdate plugin
Step 2 : In the file administrator/components/com_community/views/configuration/view.html.php
Comment lines:
// require_once( JPATH_ROOT.'/administrator/components/com_community/libraries/autoupdate.php' );
// $isuptodate = CAutoUpdate::checkUpdate();
Add line :
$isuptodate = true;