Question: I admit it, I don't know what I'm doing.

I'm attempting to learn how to use SignalR and I'm following various samples online almost verbatim and I can't get pasted $.connection being undefined. I'm working in MVC 4.0 and trying to use either nuget-downloaded signalR js files or those from sample projects. These are my script references.

```
@Scripts.Render("~/Scripts/jquery-1.7.2.min.js")
@Scripts.Render("~/Scripts/knockout-2.0.0.js")
@Scripts.Render("~/Scripts/jquery.signalR.js")
@Scripts.Render("~/signalr/hubs")

```

The scripts seem to load - I've even put alerts at the start of them which fire, but $.connection is always undefined. 

In a bizarre turn of events, I have a different project where I'm trying to use a different jQuery library and it uses $. and that object is ALSO always undefined. 

I'm just looking for any possible explanation of what I might be doing wrong. Thanks very much in advance.

Answer: 
I solved the problem. I know what I did but I don't know why it worked for sure.

I was referencing the main jquery library (version 1.7.2) at the top of the \_Layout.cshtml view, but was not referencing any other jquery scripts. I noticed that by default in the layout view it was loading 

```
@Scripts.Render("~/bundles/jquery") 

```

at the bottom of the view and that a scripts section was located below that.

```
@RenderSection("scripts", required:false)

```

I further changed my script references as shown and put my script references shown in the question above inside a 

```
@section scripts
{    
   @Scripts.Render("~/Scripts/jquery.signalR-0.5.1.js")
   @Scripts.Render("~/Scripts/jquery.color.js")
   @Scripts.Render("~/signalr/hubs")
   @Scripts.Render("~/Scripts/blasht.signalr.js")
}

```

wrapper on my view so that they would be included after the bundles were loaded. I assume that I was not loading all the necessary jquery because now it works.

Now if I can figure out how this applies to my other projects.
I have had same issue.
for me I have included jquery 2 times in page and later in layout.
Removed one of them fixed the issue.

Hope it helps