How does sharepoint resolve feature.xml file?

I'm getting a DirectoryNotFound exception when attempting to add my custom web part to a page. It seems pretty straight forward since it's complaining about not being able to find the "feature.xml" file for the web part. What is odd is that th开发者_如何学Pythone Directory that is showing up in the error message is completely different from the one that the Web Part is installed in. So the file it should be looking in is \12\Template\Features\WebPart1\feature.xml but it is looking in \12\Template\Features\WebPart2\feature.xml.

Can someone explain to me how Sharepoint performs feature activation or point me to a link that is helpful?

Thanks, Jason

--Edit more information -- I'm using WSPBuilder to create and build the Sharepoint feature. My understanding of how this should work is that WSPBuilder will copy my feature.xml file to the Sharepoint site and my .webpart to the wp folder. When I activate a feature it will look into the feature xml file and reference the .webpart file that will contain the configuration for which webpart class to load. The webpart2 folder that it is currently referencing is an old feature that I uninstalled so it must somehow be confused as far as where the feature folder is but without knowledge on how it determines where to look I'm at a bit of a loss on how to correct it. Does it save the guid in the SP database somewhere? Any information on how this feature activation process works would be helpful.

I'd vote myself down if I could... that error message had nothing to do with the problem. It was an exception that was being thrown but being caught in Sharepoint.