Hp loosing the cdrom

[Key Keeper]

I am trying to fix an HP ex3 notebook. It is one of those army ones that soldiers can get real cheap. The problem is that when I turn it on and boot into windows the cdrom shows up in the device manager but after a few minutes or so it just dissappears. If I leave a cd in it, the cdrom shows up all the time, but as soon as I eject it, POOF! I also cant find it in the bios. I was thinking a bios update would possibly help, but have heard so many horror stories about fried bios chips. Does anyone have any experiece with this thing? Its an HP OMNIBOOK EX3 GF, Win XP.