littlegreen

could just be a windwall, you could try moving the panel around after opening it up and look at the results, but i think it's doomed. normally i'd say try a new monitor if you are gonna buy something new but since it's curved the options aren't great. You can wait for a 34gp83A-B used on ebay from a 100% seller, i've seen it for as low as 400usd shipped, would not recommend the samsung monitors.

I would suggest you advise your friend to buy the new computer, install an Operating System of choice, and THEN hook up this hard drive and try to salvage as much as you can. 
 
Else, you can always get an external HDD enclosure and try to work off of that. 
 
In reality the hardware is old and useless - and so is the WindowsXP installation on it.
Saving programs' cache is a huge undertaking and not something I would ever bother with. Either direct him to a data recovery professional - whom he should visit with the HDD AND his new machine, or else salvage pictures, videos and documents - if you can that is -  and move on to a new computer. 
 
In any case - avoid turning this machine on, especially since you don't know where the problem lies. If the hard drive is on its way to fail, putting it to unnecessary work will just speed up the process. 

I feel so stupid right now... didn't even try it. 
 
Thank you for that! It worked. Although I am now getting the 4-5 "garbled" spinning windows loading thingies... which really doesn't bother me, tbh. 

60c is very low for load temps. 
Have you considered just lowering your fan speed?

Actually the Pure Rock edges out the 212 EVO at lower noise levels.
 
But either will do just fine, I have a 212 EVO cooling an i3-6100, the fan never comes on unless I load the CPU at 100%

I agree! You'll have to fiddle with software to enable fanless operation on it, but it's worth it hondo parcento.
 
I use speedfan to set custom curves for my fans, it's hard to set up but once it's going it's a breeze.