it's all still playing around on a local instance.
i have worked around it by using the redirect to login page on the vertex general tab for the registration component. It does not open up in a nice modal but it works.
ok for now.
the component is the improved ajax login and registration component from the jed. It has it's own modal popups and has to be published to a module. I had hoped Login / register positions on the template were separate modules
Created an additional module myself, which sort of works but really only on a full screen , it becomes messy on smaller windows, tablets, mobiles ... I'll leave it for now and stick with standard template ....