My thanks to all who helped. I think the problem may be solved. I have the module NoRequestNewPass and it was turned on. This virtually shut off the whole new account password system, not just the ability to request a "new" password, which I still need to shut off.

I now have it turned off and the system does as intended, however it is open to the abuses of before where I was receiving a number of suspect and fictitious requests from web nasties, obviously redirected or just plain phony email addresses. Unfortunately there seems no way to filter for those.

Thanks Roger