Could not load file or assembly 'System.Net.Http.Formatting' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the path specified

Whenever I have a NuGet error such as these I usually take these steps:

1. Go to the packages folder in the Windows Explorer and delete it.
2. Open Visual Studio and Go to Tools > Library Package Manager > Package Manager Settings and under the Package Manager item on the left hand side there is a "Clear Package Cache" button. Click this button and make sure that the check box for "Allow NuGet to download missing packages during build" is checked.
3. Clean the solution
4. Then right click the solution in the Solution Explorer and enable NuGet Package Restore
5. Build the solution
6. Restart Visual Studio

Taking all of these steps almost always restores all the packages and dll's I need for my MVC program.

EDIT >>>

For Visual Studio 2013 and above, step 2) should read:

2. Open Visual Studio and go to Tools > Options > NuGet Package Manager and on the right hand side there is a "Clear Package Cache button". Click this button and make sure that the check boxes for "Allow NuGet to download missing packages" and "Automatically check for missing packages during build in Visual Studio" are checked.

• Remove all code references to System.Net.*

• in the package window,

  Install-Package Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.Client

• Clean and rebuild your project

I found an extra

  <dependentAssembly>
    <assemblyIdentity name="System.Net.Http" publicKeyToken="b03f5f7f11d50a3a" culture="neutral" />
    <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-2.2.28.0" newVersion="2.2.28.0" />
  </dependentAssembly>

in my web.config. removed that to get it to work. some other package I installed, and then removed caused the issue.

user3919888 pointed me in the right direction, but I needed to run Update-Package -reinstall Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.Client in the Package-Manager console. Basic install by itself does not recognize the problem but does recognize that the package is already installed and does not overwrite it.

I'm posting this answer because this happens so infrequently that I end up googling and reaching this page before I remember what I did last time.

Removing the following lines from web.config solved my problem. Note that in this project I didn't use WebApi components. So for others this solution may not work as expected.

  <dependentAssembly>
    <assemblyIdentity name="System.Net.Http.Formatting" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" culture="neutral" />
    <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-5.2.3.0" newVersion="5.2.3.0" />
  </dependentAssembly>