I believe that when you request it, it will say it has to do it on startup.
Launch CMD from a regular desktop session, but you have to use the "Run as admin" option from the context menu. The boot drive is mounted and that will trigger a "Do you want to schedule this on the next boot?" prompt. Answer Y and reboot.
If all goes well, you'll get a "last chance to abort" screen and then CHKDSK will go off to the races.
Depending on the size of the HDD and the amount of work needed to piece things back together, it is not unusual for this to take an hour or more.
Some laptops also have a non-destructive HDD test in the BIOS. It may be worth looking in to that first. These days the option just exercises the HDD's built-in diagnostics. There's a 2 minute short version which will catch 90% of problems and a long version which will check the entire platter. Run the short test first. If it passes, run the long one. If either fails => time to replace the disk.
If all goes well, you'll get a "last chance to abort" screen and then CHKDSK will go off to the races.
Depending on the size of the HDD and the amount of work needed to piece things back together, it is not unusual for this to take an hour or more.
Some laptops also have a non-destructive HDD test in the BIOS. It may be worth looking in to that first. These days the option just exercises the HDD's built-in diagnostics. There's a 2 minute short version which will catch 90% of problems and a long version which will check the entire platter. Run the short test first. If it passes, run the long one. If either fails => time to replace the disk.
