I strongly recommend against doing as Russ suggests if you want to preserve your chances of recovering valuable data.
The memory failure in a Toshiba Satellite would generally not cause a failure in this way (although in very rare cases, it could) but you do not want to do anything to stress the possibly failed hard drive until after you have saved or recovered valuable data. If you have nothing valuable to save, go a head.
But if the hard drive is in failure mode, every attempt to turn the platters can possibly increase the risk that the drive will freeze up and you would then recover nothing.
After you have saved valuable data, do whatever you want, of course.
Running the memory test is ok, if the drive is not connected.
Loading the Linux Operating System is not for first timers in such an event as this, and loading it will put a fragile drive at further risk.
Running one memory module at a time is an acceptable procedure, if it then causes Windows to load... but do not make demands on the computer if it does not.