just installed 17.3 on my thinkpad e550. which also has win7 & ubuntu 14.04

they all seem to run ok. problem happens when i try & reboot or shutdown mint.

i get a screen full of debug/trace info with freq references to my radeon video card & have to power off/on to restart. the 1st line sez 'BUG:unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at (NULL)'. the 1st line after the trace sez 'fixing recursive fault but reboot needed'.

ive installed mint 3 times on this, the last time only doing updates & imported my firefox bookmarks b4 the freeze on restart. it will usually reboot 1-3 times b4 the freeze problem shows up.

Please boot into Mint and post the result of the command: It sounds like you might have better luck with a different kernel. Which kernel are you using in Ubunt 14.04?

heres the output of inxi (pretty slick command by the way):

System: Host: tp-mint Kernel: 3.19.0-32-generic x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 4.8.2)
- Desktop: Cinnamon 2.8.6 (Gtk 3.10.8~8+qiana) Distro: Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa
-Machine: System: LENOVO product: 20DF0040US v: ThinkPad E550
- Mobo: LENOVO model: 20DF0040US v: SDK0E50510 WIN Bios: LENOVO v: J5ET48WW (1.19 ) date: 08/27/2015
-CPU: Dual core Intel Core i7-5500U (-HT-MCP-)cache: 4096 KB
- flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 9577
- clock speeds:max: 3000 MHz 1: 2703 MHz 2: 2578 MHz 3: 2518 MHz 4: 2400 MHz
-Graphics: Card-1: Intel Broadwell-U Integrated Graphics bus-ID: 00:02.0
- Card-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Opal XT [Radeon R7 M265] bus-ID: 05:00.0
- Display Server: X.Org 1.17.1 drivers: ati,radeon,intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
- Resolution: 1920x1080@60.0hz
- GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 5500 (Broadwell GT2)
- GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 10.5.9 Direct Rendering: Yes
-Audio: Card-1 Intel Wildcat Point-LP High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
- Card-2 Intel Broadwell-U Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:03.0
- Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v:k3.19.0-32-generic
-Network: Card-1: Intel Ethernet Connection (3) I218-V driver: e1000e v: 2.3.2-k port: 4080 bus-ID: 00:19.0
- IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>
- Card-2: Intel Wireless 7265 driver: iwlwifi v: in-tree: bus-ID: 04:00.0
- IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
-Drives: HDD Total Size: 500.1GB (1.0% used) ID-1: /dev/sda model: ST500LM021 size: 500.1GB temp: 40C
-Partition:ID-1: / size- 15G used: 4.9G (36%) -fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda4-
-RAID: No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
-Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 46.0C mobo: N/A gpu: N/A
- Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: 0
-Info: Processes:- 182 -Uptime:- 6 min -Memory:- 446.1/7720.5MB -Init:- Upstart -runlevel:- 2 -Gcc sys:- 4.8.4
- Client:- Shell (bash 4.3.111) -inxi:- 2.2.28
----------------------------------------------------------------
i see the kernel's the same as ubuntu 14.04.

i'm still suspicious of the radeon tho, mint is the only 1 of the 3 distros i haven;t been able to install the firmware-linux free & nonfree stuff & i see radeon ~12 times in the debug/trace msg that comes up.

i haven't been able to find the msg, i think the logs are closed since it only happens at restart/shutdown.

below is a link to the screen dump:
http://imgur.com/a/fQCFz

i switched to the fglrx driver & the problem seems to have gone.