My computer is very strange... HELP!

Hello, so my computer is a bi-polar piece of junk. It was a family computer and now its mine.. It is an eMachines T5086. I tried cleaning it out and I'm sure that it was packed full of viruses. It was slow since I got it... And eventually it started randomly crashing and would stay off for a few months and then I'd turn it back on and it would work again but still be slow. Now, I've had it off for about four months since it crashed and I turned it on four days ago and it was working decently but two days ago it started going downhill again. I tried fixing it with this Fix It program and it wasn't doing much so I used the program to wipe my partitions clean and tried reinstalling Windows Vista but I guess my disc is crap because it has been abused and it scratched up. So I had a tech buddy of mine that lives out of state help me download Linux and I put it on a CD and a flash-drive but they don't open so I can't install it. Therefore I re-wiped my partitions and re-tried downloading Vista but now its saying I have no drivers and of course I don't have the driver disc because someone lost it. I can't afford to take the computer to someone to have them fix it and I certainly can't afford a new computer. Parts are a possibility but can't get them any time soon. I would really appreciate it if someone could help me.
Thank you,
Lauren.