System.Net.Http Error After Visual Studio 15.8.1 (2017) Update

Today we started getting an error from three web applications.  Two were web services and one was an ASP.NET MVC website.  The error was:

Could not load file or assembly ‘System.Net.Http, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a’ or one of its dependencies. The located assembly’s manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040)

The error was occurring on this standard line in the global.asax file:

WebApiConfig.Register(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration)

Looking at the trace statements on the error page, there was a mention of a binding redirect, which I recall seeing in the web.config of the site.  That section in the web config looked like:

<runtime>
    <assemblybinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
      <dependentassembly>
        <assemblyidentity culture="neutral" publickeytoken="b03f5f7f11d50a3a" name="System.Net.Http">
          <bindingredirect newversion="2.2.29.0" oldversion="0.0.0.0-2.2.29.0">
          </bindingredirect>
        </assemblyidentity>
      </dependentassembly>
    </assemblybinding>
</runtime>

This config block had been in place since December, 2015.  The block seems to have been added by a NuGet package at the same time, possibly with a Framework version upgrade.

However it originally ended up there, removing the config block allowed the sites to launch again.  It’s unknown why this started happening after a Visual Studio upgrade.