load-path weirdness for package installs

[Sivaram Neelakantan]

I've started to use the Emacs package manager for all my package
installs that go into .Emacs.d.  However every once in a while, a
package fails to load and I have to explicitly hardcode the path to
the elpa directory.

I have no idea why it happens.  Case in point

(push "c:/Users/ADMIN/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/elpa/mic-paren-3.8" load-path)
(require 'mic-paren) ; loading
(paren-activate)     ; activating

C-h v load-path shows that the path is already there (elided the list
a bit)

("c:/Users/ADMIN/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/elpa/all-1.0/" 
"c:/Users/ADMIN/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/elpa/auctex-11.88.1/"... 
"c:/Users/ADMIN/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/elpa/mic-paren-3.8/" ... 
"c:/gnu/elisp/org-mode/lisp/" 
"c:/Users/ADMIN/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/elpa/mic-paren-3.8" ...)

This is on a win 7 Emacs build.  And the issue also appears on debian
wheezy backport of emacs24.4

sivaram
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