This is not a problem on my own computer, and I personally use Debian (not very different). I'm going to look at my friend's PC tomorrow.
Apparently it complains about a missing libc.so at start-up, and then "starts" a non responsive console prompt.
This suggests I can copy the culprit from an good system (Live CD):
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...missing-27600/
I will definitely do a drive check there.
I'm still doing a little research, but I suspect I have to: start the original system from a rescue cd and reinstall sysutils and libc; or, if that fails, copy some libc (that hopefully does the trick) and then reinstall those packages (forcefully through synaptic).
If anyone has had similar problems ever before, some advice would be appreciated.
-----
Turned out to interrupted upgrade (which she rarely does). Here was the answer:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/11156...w-do-i-recover

Can you possibly please detail how you solved this?

If that makes you happy As I said I followed that link: http://askubuntu.com/questions/11156...w-do-i-recover I knew it was a bad upgrade, because the owner told me she interrupted it while updating (because it froze).
This is a summary with some notes of that link:
First I obtained the Ubuntu install/live CD for the correct bit-depth (64 in my case).
did not work.
Then boot off the CD, choose "Try Ubuntu".
Open a terminal and determine where your old installation is located. Personally I use . Ubuntu lets you sudo everything.
Make a directory and mount your old root there.
Bind the special system directories onto your old installation with .
(change root) into your old system.
Now run and . It took a hell of long time in this case, as if all packages were being replaced. (Maybe I forgot to bind sys :-X) In any case, don't interrupt it. Now you should be able to reboot normally.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks!