Hmm, I just checked with 2.45 on windows and .3ds imports fine.  How exactly are you importing it?  It should go:

1. file>import>3ds
2. the file opening screen appears
3. navigate the the file, select it, and press the import 3ds button
4. a little settings box comes up near your mouse
5. press ok on the little settings box (the box may go away if you move your mouse out of it; if you haven't hit ok then it hasn't actually imported.)
6. the main screen with your 3d window, buttons window, etc. comes back up; your model should be there.

If you get through all that ok and you don't see it, try pressing the tilde (~) key to open all layers, it may have showed up in a hidden one.  If you still don't see it, it may be really big or really small or somewhere away from the center of the scene, so try zooming in and out.  If you still can't find it, try opening the outliner window (you can just change the 3d window to the outliner if you like) and see if something named something similar to whatever you called your model in the program you exported the 3ds file from appears in the scene.  If it doesn't, it probably hasn't imported correctly for some reason; check the text console to see if there are any error messages there.