IllegalArgumentException at org.springframework.asm.ClassReader when initializing Spring context

If you are using JRE 8 then change your spring version to 4. It will work perfectly..

The probable answer to the original question shall be that switching to JRE7 from JRE8 might help. As in my case the error message Changed. So this shall be considered as an option while using Spring 3.1.0. It helped me.