Cannot find the declaration of element 'beans'

Try this, assuming you're on Spring 3.1:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" 
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans 
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.1.xsd">

Replace 3.1 on the last line with whatever major Spring version you use. Meaning: there is no 3.1.1 XSD even though there is a Spring version 3.1.1.

Add this code ..It helped me

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" 
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
         xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" 
         xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop" 
         xsi:schemaLocation="
         http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans 
           classpath:/org/springframework/beans/factory/xml/spring-beans-3.0.xsd 
         http://www.springframework.org/schema/context 
         classpath:/org/springframework/context/config/spring-context-3.0.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop 
        classpath:/org/springframework/aop/config/spring-aop-3.0.xsd
         ">      
     </beans>

Found it on another thread that solved my problem... was using an internet connection less network.

In that case copy the xsd files from the url and place it next to the beans.xml file and change the xsi:schemaLocation as under:

 <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" 
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans 
spring-beans-3.1.xsd">