So what recommendation do you have for me? Can I try transferring some of those funds to my wallet to see if it works or is it too risky to try? thank you so much
You're not reading carefully. I wrote to you that you can't do anything with these bitcoins.
This. Just because you can see the BTC doesn't mean you can spend it. Go ahead and try. It will ask you for a password because the wallet.dat is encrypted and you won't be able to provide it because you don't have it. The password will likely be extremely difficult if not impossible to crack and won't be worth anyone's time to try. People sell wallets like this all the time to newbies who think maybe it could be worth something. It isn't. Sadly.