Cd drive not recognized

I have my mother-in-law's four-year old HP laptop at my house because she is going to give it to her 
granddaughter.  First thing when I took it out of the case, the CD drive doesn't 
work, isn't recognized - in Device Manager it has the yellow exclamation point.  This happened to my Dell laptop last year and I took it to the Geek Squad and they screwed it up so nothing worked - their supervisor had to fix it back (almost) to like it was before and they didn't charge me.  I'm not sure if I should take my mother-in-law's in there but I don't know what to do myself.  Does anyone have a way for me to fix it like the Geek Squad had said they were going to do?  Thanks for your help, - - - kvhepler