Unable to find script library

Author: May

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25 Jul

Whenever you get this kind of error messages with instructions, do not follow the instruction straight away.
Always turn to your best friend, google, to see how others solve it and search for the best possible answer.
May be this is a bad advice but I never trust error message instructions. Of course you must read the message and instruction properly to see it is a sensible/reasonable instruction on the problem. As for me, I just have to find out whether others are actually following the instructions as mentioned or not.

The error:
Unable to find script library ‘/aspnet_client/system_web/1_1_4322/WebUIValidation.js’. Try placing this file manually, or reinstall by running ‘aspnet_regiis -c’.

The error dialog box pops up on those pages with form validation.
This problem happens whenever the system cannot access aspnet_client folder either you don’t have a permission or it is not in your root directory, ie. when you changed the root directory for your virtual folders, from Inetpub/wwwroot to some other folder, and when you use Validation controls (eg. RequiredFieldValidator, ValidationSummary, etc) on input TextBoxes in one of your site.

You can check whether you are using the default root or not by checking the property > Home Directory of your IIS virtual directory as shown on the following images.

Default virtual root

Custom virtual root

For this error, I don’t like uninstalling IIS and reinstall again just for the sake of one site error. There got to have some easier way to solve it and yes, there is.
I’ve also found out that when you follow the error instructions straight away, you might screw up the problem more and some of the google results shows that it actually got screwed in some cases.
Some people uninstalled and reinstalled IIS but that doesn’t solve the problem and they have to uninstalled and reinstalled .net framework as well.
Different solution for different cases I’m sure, but for my case, I tried the easiest resolution ie. copy the aspnet_client folder from wwwroot to my new virtual root folder, and voila it works!