Windows 7 dismounting laptop optical drive instead of ejecting disc

I'm working with a Dell Latitude E6520, and I'm running into a strange issue. Like many laptops, it has a built-in optical drive, but Windows 7 seems to be treating it like a removable storage device. If we try to eject the disc in the drive, the drive itself disappears. We then have to use a paper clip to pop out the tray and remove the disc, then reboot the PC in order for it to detect the drive again. I also noticed that the device is listed under Safely Remove Hardware. If a disc is in the drive, it will list both the drive and the disc as being removable, but dismounts the drive no matter what you select.

We had Dell replace this drive once already, but it is still doing the same thing. The strange thing is, I ran tool from Dell that runs a complete diagnostic on the computer, and one of the tests it ran was to try opening the drive. When it got to that step, the drive opened without issue.

Has anyone run into a similar issue? If so, how did you go about fixing it? I see some third-party utilities that I could install to work around this issue, but the end user would like to try and get it working as intended if possible. Thank you.