I had issues with my laptop constantly freezing. So I found a post where someone had suggested updating the kernel to remedy the issue. I followed the steps outlined here:
https://askubuntu.com/a/789092/542662
The end result of this is my system going into kernel panic every time I try to turn it on. I'm not even sure as to how to try to fix this or install a fresh version of Ubuntu 16.04 at this point.