System could not be found Visual Studio 2017 ASP.NET Core project
Multiple closing and reopening of VS2017 fixed it for me.
Came across the same issue today. I had an old nuget source that no longer existed. So I went into Tools > Nuget Packet Manager and un-checked the wrong one. Hit "Ok", and then rebuilt the project, and it works great now. It seems like you stumbled onto it, but also wanted to verify that it fixed my issue, and it does.
I had the same problem, first when converting a VS2015 net core mvc web project to 2017 and then when trying to create a new core web application in 2017.
Went to Tools|NuGet Package Manager|Package Manager Settings - checked 'Allow NuGet to download missing packages' and 'Automatically check for missing packages during build in VS' and then clicked 'Clear All NuGet Cache(s)'.
Then re-built the solution - it found and loaded all the required packages and ran OK.
May not work for all cases but simple and worth a try.
I had the same issue in my Visual studio 2017 .Net Core application. I closed the Visual studio and re-open fixed everything.