CD Drive problem?

I started having a problem last week, where sometimes I would start my computer up and wouldn't be able to use the CD drive (it's a CDRW/DVDR drive in a Toshiba laptop). It didn't show up at all in "my computer" or in the device manager. But after a couple reboots, it would be there.

Now the problem has escalated. No matter how many times I reboot without a CD in the drive, windows can't see the drive. There aren't any conflicts showing up in Device manager, and I haven't recently installed anything else on the system. I checked BIOS on startup also, and I can't find anything in there about a CD drive (e.g. master vs slave, etc). I can still open/close the drive using the button on the front, and I can hear it spin upon inserting a CD. But no autoplay/presence in "my computer"/green "cd drive active" LED signal/anything.

Then strangeness happened as I was composing this post: If I have windows open, put in a CD, then restart the computer, it magically makes the computer see the CD drive, read data off it, etc. I get the feeling this type of rebooting shouldn't be necessary. Any ideas on how to remedy the situation?

Thanks

system specs:
Toshiba satellite A35-S159, about a year old
pentium 4 2.3GHz
512MB ram
WindowsXP home
CDRW/DVDR drive: Toshiba DVD-ROM SD-R2412

 

if you can't see the drive in the bios, windows will never see it.
recheck your jumper settings, you may want to switch all the devices on that ide cable to cable select. and don't forget to check for loose connections,
if you can't get it to show up in the bios after that you may be out of luck-the cd drive may be bad.

good luck.