"Parser Error Message: Could not load type" in Global.asax

Question

Check that the project output path (project properties / Build) is set to bin and not bin\Release or bin\Debug

For some reason IIS (VS development Server or Local IIS) always accesses the libraries from the bin directory (and won't look up for subdirectories)

Your local web server is running different code than what you're actually working on. Ensure you have stopped debugging, stop your local web server, clean and rebuild as Peter suggested, double-check your global.asax and global.asax.cs, and try again.

If this doesn't work and you are using local IIS, try removing the site in IIS Manager and recreating it manually.

Try modifying your global.asax file (simple add a space somewhere) and re-run. this will force the built in webserver to refresh and recompile the global.asax file.

Also do a clean and rebuild - should fix the problem

This happens sometimes if you change namespace information (project or class level) after the global.asax is generated.

Right click on the Global.asax file and select "Open With" and then select "XML (Text) Editor with Encoding" (other editors may work as well, but this is what I use).

Then edit the "Inherits" section in the XML directive

<%@ Application Codebehind="Global.asax.cs" Inherits="GodsCreationTaxidermy.MvcApplication" Language="C#" %>)

so that it matches the actual full name of your Application class. And that's it.

Another option is to copy off all your code from Global.asax.cs and then delete and create another Global.asax file (and then copy the code back into Global.asax.cs).

I closed and reopened visual studio and it worked.

I had to go to BUILD -> CONFIGURATION MANAGER and -- ahem -- check the box next to my project to ensure it actually gets built.

I had this issue today, and it took me a while to find the cause.

Basically, my main VS2015 project was including a sub-project which had been built using a higher version of .Net Framework.

Bizarrely, when you have this problem, VS2015 will happily report that the solution has built okay, but when you try and run the website, it just gives you that misleading error, suggesting that your Global.asax.cs file is wrong.

So, if you see this error, and Cleaning/Rebuilding doesn't help, open your Project's References tree, and check for exclamation marks.

Also, check your Output window for messages like this:

The primary reference "C:\Projects\Business Objects 4\bin\Release\BusinessObjects.dll" 
could not be resolved because it was built against 
the ".NETFramework,Version=v4.5" framework. 
This is a higher version than the currently targeted framework
".NETFramework,Version=v4.0".

The solution, of course, is to right-click on your main project, select the top tab, "Application", and change the Target Framework version to a higher version which matches your sub-project.

It's annoying that Visual Studio 2015 will let you fully build and run Solutions which quietly contain this problem. It's asking for trouble..!