I created an ASP.NET 4.7.1 WebForms web application project.
- I removed all references to ~/Scripts/WebForms and ~/Scripts/WebForms/MsAjax in BundleConfig.cs.
- I removed the NuGet packages for Microsoft.AspNet.ScriptManager.MSAjax and Microsoft.ScriptManager.MSAjax
- I did an 'Edit > Find in Files' for "msajax" on the entire project, and nothing was found.
When I load any page on my site, ~/Scripts/WebForms/MsAjax/MicrosoftAjax.js and ~/Scripts/WebForms/MsAjax/MicrosoftAjaxWebForms.js both still load. You can see them in HTML source and see that they get loaded in standard browser developer tools. I don't need them (as far as I know), and I don't want them wasting my bandwidth (over 140KB each pageload).
Obviously I can delete the files themselves, but then I just get HTTP 404 errors in my logs.