Macbook Not Booting After Update

[elie.fares]

Talk about bad luck!
My friend left for Switzerland a couple of days ago. She lands there and while skyping with her today, I tell her to update Snow Leopard via software update since the last update she got to was 10.6.3.

She texts me a few minutes ago that her macbook pro (mid 09, 13'') is not booting up: Apple logo and spinning wheel stay there.
This never happened to me so I have no idea what she can do with being all the way in Switzerland with her MBP as her only laptop and no installation discs with her.

I told her to boot into safe mode as that's the first thing that comes to mind and to attempt a disk repair from there. If that fails, what should her next step be?

 

[Matthew Yohe]

How long did she let the spinning wheel spin?

 

[elie.fares]

She didn't say. She said it kept giving her the Apple and the spinning wheel.

 

[JediMeister]

She has a limited number of steps available to her without the install discs. They are laid out here. She can run fsck without the discs but if there's a hardware issue she would do best to take it to a service provider in Switzerland.