Janie, I agree with Bert. Best Fry is a gang of thieves. Their purpose is to sell you as much as possible and give as little as possible. Their discounts usually bring items down to suggested list price.

Is there a good freestanding computer shop near where you live? Speak with your neighbors and coworkers. Lack of time is no reason to get yourself ripped off.

Consider getting both a large [at least 1 Terabyte] external hard drive and an external CD/DVD drive/burner.

Forget about fixing or even opening the stuck CD drive. Buy a replacement CD. You can transfer all or most of the content to the external drive. Perhaps you should have two external drives, one for you and one for your kid.

Having cleaned the C drive, you can then upgrade the OS. You may have to upgrade you RAM. This will give you a more flexible, faster machine.

Based on this discussion, I see no reason to buy a new machine.