Windows not starting properly

[Beef Boss]

Recently my laptop has been giving me problems, and it's starting to worry me. Today I got a message that windows didn't start correctly. It boots to a windows defender window on secure boot.  Anybody have any ideas? The computer also didn't boot from the internal HDD on legacy mode either. Is this thing taking a dump or what? 

[Radium_Angel]

There are tons of specialized software solutions that you can run to detect problems.

MemTest x86 for RAM

Your hard drive's maker will have specialized software to test the health of the drive

The laptop's maker will have similar software for the laptop, etc.

[Beef Boss]

3 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

There are tons of specialized software solutions that you can run to detect problems.

MemTest x86 for RAM

Your hard drive's maker will have specialized software to test the health of the drive

The laptop's maker will have similar software for the laptop, etc.

I got windows to scan the drive and it said there were errors. I got it fixed I think now, hopefully. This laptop is not subjected to any abuse, it never travels or anything. I just don't have any back ups of this drive haha. 

[Radium_Angel]

11 hours ago, BadluckBrian said:

I got windows to scan the drive and it said there were errors. I got it fixed I think now, hopefully. This laptop is not subjected to any abuse, it never travels or anything. I just don't have any back ups of this drive haha. 

If the drive software found errors, back up your data now

[johnukguy]

Errors are perfectly normal and common, unless you have a lot of bad sectors on the drive. It takes a while but it's worth, now and again, doing a check that also looks for and marks bad sectors.

[Beef Boss]

12 minutes ago, johnukguy said:

Errors are perfectly normal and common, unless you have a lot of bad sectors on the drive. It takes a while but it's worth, now and again, doing a check that also looks for and marks bad sectors.

The laptop is a few years old now, but it's not too old. The only drive I have that has bad sectors is the laptop that got the blue screen and now runs Ubuntu on the same drive. I didn't scan it for sectors but windows found some issue and I restarted it and I think it's all good now. 

What software is good for checking drives? 

[johnukguy]

The built in software in Windows is generally okay but this article suggest some good alternatives that can do a bit more in some cases:

https://www.lifewire.com/free-hard-drive-testing-programs-2626183