Fire off alerts on button click
Not sure if this is your problem, but renderPartial() does not play well with AJAX. It is a known Yii issue:
http://www.yiiframework.com/forum/index.php/topic/24699-yii-20-ajaxrenderpartial-conflict/http://www.yiiframework.com/forum/index.php?/topic/10427-ajax-clientscript
I ran into the problem when I tried to load a form via AJAX, then submit it back using CHtml::ajaxSubmitButton.
in my code it works try this
<?phpecho CHtml::ajaxSubmitButton('Save','your-url',array( 'type'=>'POST', 'dataType'=>'json', 'success'=>'js:function(data){ if(data.result==="success"){ // do something on success, like redirect }else{ $("#some-container").html(data.msg); } }',));?>