Well, all I can tell you is I've never known the above method not to work unless there is a PC problem preventing it. It's a tried and tested process over many years, many devices, and many versions of IOS. How many PC's have your tried? Do they have the same basic setup? Usually folks forget they have exactly the same things installed across all their PC's and that's the problem.
The other thing your problems may point to is a hardware failure in the iPad. One thing Apple are good at is helping n00bs, so if your friend takes his iPad into any Apple Store they will restore it for him using one of their Macs. That at least will rule out a problem with the device itself.