I upgraded a site from 1.9.0 to 1.9.3, everything is working ok accept for the customer registration form. I have done some troubleshooting already but I am stuck. The problem seems to boil-down to the getPassword function returning a null value. getConfirmationPassword works as expected. When the user presses the submit button on the registration page it returns the error messages "password cannot be empty" and "passwords must match."
If I cheat and set $password=getConfirmationPassword I can get the registration to complete. However, the password saved in Magento is not the password the user entered and they are forced to do a password reset. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.