emergency help with images

things we tried, loading fresh copy of opencart and upgraded from 1.5.2 to 1.5.6
installed ccleaner and ran it to delete all cookies, clean cashe etc and rebooted.

anyhow i am doing the following. click product on main menu (admin panel i.e backdoor to add product), clicking on catalogue, then clicking product, then insert, then either data tab or image it dont matter both do it, then hit browse. usualy a seperate window pops up allowing me to browse the folders to pick an image to upload then when i click the image it closes.
now on top of screen the image folders pop up and i click the image i want and nothing happens.

PLEASE HELP, ive been unable to load new product for going on 2 weeks now and am at my wits end.
if i did this right there should be a screenshot attached
thank you

My first thought would be to make sure the javascript folder is present in your admin directory. I don't use 1.5.6 but there should be a javascript folder in admin/view so that would be my first step. If it is there, make sure permissions on it allow execution.

not a java issue, someone screwed with filemanager. how do you get the box to stop merging with the same page and go back to being a seperate popup?