Norton Internet Security reports that it is turned off on W7 with Norton 18.6.0.29

My Norton is up to date (LiveUpdate 10 minutes ago) and the Norton system status shows all the possible protections to be on.

Nevertheless, Windows 7 on my home desktop HP Pavillion Elite shows red Security flag with the message as in the title.

Then it asks if i want to run c:\Program Files (x86)\Norton Internet Security\Engine\18.6.0.29\WSCStub.exe

Please see attached picture.

 

The issue started to show up after a forced reboot. I did another clean reboot of the machine, but the problem still remains

Any advice appreciated