Unable to reinstall Norton Security on my XP

Hi romanticpoet111:

Do you have a subscription for the Standard, Deluxe or Premium version of Norton Security?  If you aren't sure, log in to your Norton Account at https://my.norton.com/account/subscriptions to see your product name, expiry date of your subscription, the number of available installation seats, and current product activation key.

What version number of Norton Security is currently installed on your computer (go to Help | About)? You didn't mention how far back your system was rolled back when you re-imaged your hard drive with Norton Ghost, but as far as I know Norton Security v22.15.x (the legacy version for Win XP and Vista computers that have a CPU that supports SSE2) has not been updated since v22.15.5.40 was released on 24-Sep-2020 (see the release notes <here>).  Post back if you aren't sure if your CPU supports the SSE2 instruction set.

I no longer have Norton Security v22.15.x installed on my Vista SP2 computer (I rarely boot up this machine since I purchased a Win 10 laptop) so I'm not sure what update delivered via an automatic LiveUpdate could have damaged your Norton Security installation.  I'm not sure exactly what you mean when you said that a recent update "messed up" your registration but if you were fully patched to v22.15.5.40 then the only updates you should be receiving via LiveUpdate are things like definition updates and perhaps the occasional update to the Intrusion Prevention System script engine (IPSEng32.dll). These IPS script engine updates occasionally caused issues on very old Win XP machines with CPUs that did not support SSE2 and had to use Norton v21.7.x products (see my 12-Mar-2019 post in Norton 360 on Windows XP Not Working) but these old Norton v.21.7.x products are no longer supported by NortonLifeLock and will now receive a forced upgrade to v22.15.x (see my 21-Aug-2020 post in Forced Update Expired Trial Version of NIS Prevents Reinstall Activation) if a v21.7.x product is installed.

I've never used Norton Ghost, but according to Tony_Weiss' 15-Mar-2013 article Norton Ghost Has Been Discontinued  this imaging software was discontinued several years ago. You are likely aware of this, but if you plan to perform a clean reinstall of Norton Security on your computer [e.g., by running the Norton Removal and Reinstall (NRnR) tool in advanced "Remove Only" mode as described in the Norton support article Download and Run the Norton Remove and Reinstall Tool for Windows ] then just be aware that there is a possibility that this could damage your Norton Ghost installation - see my 16-Sep-2019 post in TightGit's Norton Removal Tool.  As long as you are using the unsupported Norton Ghost for disk imaging (I use Macrium Reflect Free v7.x on my Vista SP2 laptop) this will make it difficult to perform a good, clean reinstall of Norton Security v22.15.5.40 on your Win XP SP3 machine.
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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox ESR v52.9.0 * Malwarebytes Premium v3.5.1.2522-1.0.365 * Macrium Reflect Free v7.3.6391
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3 GB RAM, 256 GB WD SATA HDD, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS