No GUI after installing

Few things I would make sure of.

1. Check the name of that ISO file you downloaded and make sure it has "Desktop" in there somewhere.
2. How old is the laptop? If it's too old, Unity won't run on it.
3. If you want to try and install Unity anyway, sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
4. If you can't use Unity with Ubuntu, either try a different distribution or install a different desktop environment. See here for a list/comparison of desktop environments for Linux.

Good luck!

EDIT: If you want to remove Unity, see this answer.

Ok,

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop 
sudo shutdown -r now

Worked! Not sure what he did wrong, would you suspect he downloaded the server even though I warned him? Again, great community here and thank you for your help.