[eluser]tonanbarbarian[/eluser]
I have seen a number of other posts talking about issues like this and in each case it was an issue with a method or variable already existing in the controller or the library that was conflicting.
I have never had a problem loading the validation library
I suggest you turn on debugging
config/config.php
Code:
$config['log_threshold'] = 2;
$config['log_path'] = '/some/where/valid/';
and then look at the logs to see what they show you
