disappearing cd/dvd combo drive

[crodney]

My CD/DVD combo drive keeps disappearing off of my system.  When I reboot the device and icon and everything is there but after about 5 minutes or less of inactivity the icon disappears and it will not work.  If I use the device after rebooting it will continue to work until there is about 5 minutes of inactivity and then again the icon will disappear and it will not work.  I have a gateway Pentium 4 2.60ghz desktop with 512MB ram and I am using windows XP SP3.

Please Help
Thank you

[Broni]

One of these may help:
1. Uninstall the drive through Device Manager.
Restart computer. The drive will be automatically reinstalled.
or...
2. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060
Restart computer.
or...
3. Download, and run Restore Missing CD Drive patch
Double click on cdgone.zip to unzip it.
Right click on cdgone.reg, click Merge.
Accept registry merge.
Restart computer.
or...
4. Go to Device Manager, click a "+" sign next to IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers.
You'll see two items:
- ATA Channel0 (or Primary Channel)
- ATA Channel1 (or Secondary Channel)
Right click on each of them, and click Uninstall. Confirm.
Restart Windows. They'll be automatically reinstalled.