@iionly,

When you said "Or you could use the validationbyadmin plugin" it was a good suggestion. Only thing is remember I couldn't install any new plugins becasue my admin account was no longer in existence. The two gents above were correct I should have never deleted the admin user.

What i'm concerned about now is my beta testing. Can I do that with a local host or should my website be loaded to a webserver and locked as private so I can test it?

How does it usually work?

You can get mail working on windows xampp, it's just a PITA.  You can test everything else without the emails, other notifications you can test with the messages system.

I use a development server (a real non-localhost server) specifically for user testing.  Set up on a subdomain and lock registration - like dev.mydomain.com or whatever

Thanks Matt! Also thanks iionly, and rjcalifornia. Cheers.