Account and people are two separate modules. I would be curious to know why you tried that. Would not it be because like me you also have a lot of accounts without profiles? I had this problem, I found a solution, it is not perfect but I still got a better one. Tell us?

It worked fine only a one page sign up not long ago... I just realized from your comment that I did recently add the 'Accounts' module because I was trying to see a list of members and who has confirmed their email addresses. That must be when this problem started. I will try deactivating the accounts module and see if the problem is resolved.