No sorry about that, it's local.
But I doubled checked everything, still the same. I compared the old register.php and the new one from the attachment, and a suggestion could it be that there is no call at all for somewhere:
$main_smarty->display($the_template . '/register_step_2.tpl');
Just a suggestion as I have only a basic idea of what goes on in the file. But don't worry about it, it's probably just on my side. Wait till someone else has the same problem, I don't really need the new captcha, the old one is perfect for me