I thought I had made it clear but obviously not!
NEW users are fine, (I assume this is what you mean by people who have no subscription, as I said before, members MUST have a subscription so there are no users without a subscription. Confirmation works ok for these.
IMPORTED users who are EXPIRED, and who renew through the site, are also fine.
IMPORTED users who are EXPIRED, but due to the fact that they paid externally and hence don't have a basket to "authorise", have to be manually approved to reactivate their membership.
To do this we have to tick the "reactivate" button in the back end on their subscriptions tab and then manually activate/confirm the user.
These are the ones who DO NOT work. As soon as you activate them, the confirmed option changes from YES to NO. It then won't let me change it to YES unless I manually change it in the back end.
I have already been through the whole disabling plugins ritual as previously mentioned in this thread - even did a full install - and still have the problem. Fairly sure it's not due to any modifications.
Ruth