OE has just lost the contents of its inbox!

[#1]

My boss's OE has just lost the contents of its inbox with no prior warning - was sending an email that wasn't going through properly, and next thing the inbox is cleared of its 500+ emails.
Are these emails likely to be stored in .dbx folders somewhere on his system? He's running Windows XP on a laptop; not sure what version of OE, but one of the newer versions.
Could it be a virus, or a corruption in the software?
He has a lot of folders within OE that contain a lot of emails - 1000+
Last back up of his emails was done about  a month ago, so we should be able to salvage those, but not the newer ones.
Anyone any ideas? Thanks for any tips/guidance!!

[#2]

Have a look at:
http://ask-leo.com/the_contents_of_my_inbox_disappeared_can_i_recover.html
Regards,
Nel

[#3]

To locate where the messages are stored and to see what is there open Outlook Express and click ‘Tools’ from the menu to open the drop down menu.
Select and click ‘Options …’ from the bottom of the menu list.
Click the tab ‘Maintenance’ to bring it forwards.
Click the button [Store Folder …] to open the documents location.
Highlight the complete directory line in the box that opens and either press [Ctrl]+ or ‘Edit’, ‘Copy’ to copy the complete line (make sure to copy the whole line).
Open your Internet browser (IE 6/7, Firefox whatever).
Paste the line you just copied into the browser address bar and press [Enter] the browser should open the location of the files and you should be able to see what is stored there.
I suggest before you do anything else you copy and paste all the files to a safe location before you try and do any repairs to the files.
Regards, P.
Edit;
You might like to have a look at this link for another way of finding and importing the files back into OE
http://www.nu2.nu/howto/outlookexpress/

[#4]

Thanks both for your suggestions - I have passed these on.
Do people generally recommend using a non Microsoft email package? Which is best and are alternatives bug free too?

[#5]

Thunderbird (from the makers of Firefox) has a pretty good reputation. I have it as a backup email program, but I haven't used it in anger.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/
Regards,
Neil

[#6]

Over the years I found OE was a pain in the backside to both use and for trashing emails. Some years ago (back in the mists of time  :)) I changed to Outlook and have used it ever since. I have all my birthdays, meetings, tasks and addresses stored in it and use it every day even though I am retired. If he has Office installed he should already have it on the laptop.
Otherwise as Njal says Thunderbird comes highly recommended if you want to get away from M$.
Regards, P.

[#7]

Quote from: newinvention

My boss's OE has just lost the contents of its inbox with no prior warning

I don't suppose that he did a Ctrl+A and Delete by mistake and they are all sitting in the deleted folder.