Does a Windows laptop check its RAM memory during the POST?

If so, and if a memory chip is failing, how does it report this?

My laptop has been rather unstable lately. I’d be working along, and then it suddenly reboots. Or, it freezes momentarily and then reports that it has “recovered from a serious error”. I ran chkdsk and it did not report anything serious and there were no bad sectors. I’m suspecting a memory chip that may be going bad. Is this a reasonable conclusion? How do I find out for sure?