mail function on 1.78

I believe it's 1.78 or whatever is the the newest before 1.8. Is there a fix so when people sign up it doesn't take hours to get their verify email? I've tried to disable that mod that makes them verify, but that didn't work. It just looped the page. It's not my website host I know this.

Also any good captcha mods I can use. I've tried a couple and when you sign up the captcha question doesn't show up so I had to disable it too.

 

Thank you.