Terrible Mess

I am thinking about buying a used computer for my 9 yr old son to play games like Call of Duty 2 on. It is a Dell dimension 8100 and the owner wants $50 for the monitor, keyboard, mouse, and tower. In the first place,is this a good deal?

It has severe problems that I think are virus caused. I cannot even get it to boot up far enough to attempt the do this first page in this forum. It is terribly slow. It is running windows ME which I am also unfamiliar with. Any help is greatly appreciated

 

Cool, that was my next question. Is there a thread here that will walk me through that process. I also don't have the Windows ME disk that I assume came with the computer. I do have XP at home but dont really want to install an illegal copy. Is there a cost efficent OS that I can purchase?

 

It is full version but it is a Dell supplied copy. Since both computers are Dell, will that work?

 

great news, thank you very much