Windows 98 Freezing and cd-rom problem

I recently got a Pentium II computer with Windows 98 from a friend. He was upgrading and having several problems with this PC. There are really two outstanding things. The first is that the computer does not recognize the cd-rom drive and it almost always freezes whenever I try to boot it up. So I thought that maybe I could replace the cd-drive and then format the hard dsk and reinstall windows. But, when I replaced the cd-drive, the computer still freezes at boot-up and it does not recognize it. I created a 98 boot disk that has the drivers for cd-roms that you can use in DOS. The boot disk works fine but whenever I try to access a cd, it gives me an error message that it can't read the cd drive. I can't format 98 until I get the computer to recognize the cd-rom because I wouldn't be able to reinstall windows. When windows does load up normally (very rarely)...it still prevents me from accessing the cd-drive because it freezes when I go to "My Computer." Safe mode also ignores the cd drive. I even tried switching the channels so that the cd-drive was on primary, in hopes that windows might recognize it. Nope. Bios is plug and play and I know that it recognizes it because it says so at start-up. Any Ideas? Any help would be appreciated. (Sorry to literally pour my heart out but I believe it best to explain everything I tried).