Can't use my 3rd license from my NIS CD?

My first time posting here.  I've been a loyal Norton user for about 8 years now.

I used to just purchase a new year of coverage online but lately I've been buying the disc at Retail PC stores. 

I've used two of the 3 licenses on my laptop and and on my desktop PC. 

A few weeks ago my daughter brought her laptop over and said it wasn't connecting to the net and acting funny. First thing I did was check her AV protection.  Expired!  I had installed NIS last year on it and assumed she was

keeping it current. 

 

So I dug out my Norton disc and tried to install NIS.  Nothing happened....the laptop wouldn't detect the CD Drive and after looking in device manager I did see an exclamation point next to the drive.

So we ended up buying a brand new machine.   It came with Norton's trial protection and it's about to

expire now, so I inserted the CD to install the 3rd license (have a few months left on it) and it

said that I couldn't?  Kept asking for a Valid product key?

I followed the links and they're apparently suggesting that I have a knock-off and want me to send in my CD

and wait 3 weeks for a reply?

If it wasn't valid I wouldn't have been able to run NIS for the last 9-10 months on two of my machines.

Is there some other option to have this straightened out?

Since I still have a few months left before I need to purchase another NIS CD again, I'd rather wait, but I would also

like to use that 3rd license I paid for since the new machine only has a week or so protection left. 

 

Thanks in advance for any guidance of what to do next.