Question BIOS Loses IDE drives

[jlatus]

I have an older Gateway ML3109 laptop running Phoenix Trustedcore BIOS 83.09. On the IDE bus there is a 100 gig PATA/IDE HDD and a CD/DVD drive. The system will periodically "lose" these devices and when I go into BIOS setup it shows <NONE> for both devices. Usually powering the laptop off and on will bring them back in the BIOS, but it happens again later. Any idea if this is something that can be fixed or is this just an old hardware problem not worth fixing? Thanks

 

[jlatus]

PS I have installed a new CMOS battery