I havea similar problem, it isolates but when you hit exit isolation it pops that up and you can either unhide all or alt q your selection again and then reclick it. also, a max script window pops up with a bunch of script. I find this happens the most when I open a max file that was saved in isolation mode. its a pain but…
Not sure why but when I installed Max 2009 on this new Windows 7 install my Isolate Selection tool was been broken, which as you can imagine is a real pain. The error says: Unknown property: "IsInstance" in undefined. The "Exit Isolation" box pops up still but nothing is actually isolated. I already have max set up the…
I had the same, its about your node (object in max). Just create a new poly object, get into the edit panel and attach your working object to the poly. This should create a clean node in max with the IsInstance property so that it works again on alt+q or isolate.
try isolating on a fresh scene, so hit reset create a new object and try isolating. That way we could at least pin it down to either a application or file problem.