Old Windows 98 PC not reading CD-R

Hello all.

I just got an old windows 98 PC to play some older PC games on. I am trying to get some drivers installed on it as I just setup a fresh install of Windows 98 on it. I installed Quake and noticed that it had some really bad speedup issues. I decided to install some drivers on the PC since i figured it needed them. However, whenever i go to put in a new CD-R disc, Windows 98 won't recognize it. I tried creating a .txt file just to test it but it says I don't have permission to do so. I figured it might be a read only drive since a lot of them were back in the day. So I went to my modern PC and slapped the CD-R in there. As a test to see if it would just read the disc, I created the .txt file on the disc, ejected and stuck it back in the Windows 98 PC and it would just show up blank. I then tried inserting another untouched CD-R into the Windows 98 PC and it just sat there saying It's still trying to read the disc indefinitely.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here. I know the drive is good because I was able to install Quake. I've tried USB but it won't recognize any of my flash drives either. Probably because they are made for USB 2.0 and 3.0.

Any help is appreciated.

Also for those wondering this is a Dell Dimension 450 with a Pentium III.