I have a process that I go through when adding job vacancy notices to our intranet:
Upload the file (PDF)
Go to the Metadata screen and add metadata
Go to the Details screen and change asset status to live
Stay on the details screen and change the future status to archive on the application closing date (I've noticed I can't do 3 and 4 at the same time, or I get errors…)
Go to the Linking screen and set the future lnking to delete the asset from it's current location and move it to a new link parent (an archive of vacancy notices)… Now this is where I run into problems… every single time I try to select the folder I want to 'archive' the files to the asset picker just won't cooperate. I click on change, and I can't select anything. Change… cancel… change (again)… still nothing. I end up having to reload the asset map, then find the asset I was just working on, and select "Linking". And it's plain annoying and time consuming. Now that I've been using Matrix for a while I can figure out how to make it work (by reloading the asset map and selecting Linking from the right-click menu), but I think less experienced users who will be publishing the notices in the future might find this very, very frustrating.
I use the drop-down at the top right to move between screens, because the asset map doesn't display the file I've added until I manually refresh it. It seems that I can't get the Linking screen to work without going through this step though.
Can you try using other asset finders on different assets to see if they work. Also ceck if you are getting any JavaScript errors when you click Change/Cancel.
It is also happening on redirect asset screens. When you create the redirect asset and then acquire the lock on the details screen immediately afterwards, the asset finder doesn't work when clicking on the "Change" button in order to pick an the asset to redirect to. I have found that I have to update the asset map (waiting… waiting… waiting…), then click on the asset, select "Details", then click on "Change", which works under this scenario.
This may seem like a minor bug, but it really impacts on productivity.
There's no Javascript error (as far as I can tell).
If you have more than one Root URL, could you try accessing the site via another URL to see if that works? I'm starting to see a pattern with Java/JavaScript communication that seems to be affected by IE's security settings and I'm trying to work out the exact cause. The same problem seems to be occuring on other sites (i.e. the Asset Map not updating automatically).
Alternatively, try adding your Matrix installation to the Trusted Zone in IE to see if that helps.
There's a security 'feature' in javascript (would you believe it, js has security?) that doesn't allow cross domain scripting (ie if you're at domain.com, you can't access any content in a window that's come from otherdomain.com, even if they're both pointing at the same location). I've found this occuring on other installations, but have never found a proper solution to it.