Thank you for your reply.  I still have no idea why it was doing that but it stopped without ever giving me an explanation.  It had been sending me off to register my copy and go to the store when in fact the cactus I wanted to add WAS and still is available.  
     I still have no idea why the e-on software registration page seems to think that my Esprite is registered but the program itself and the store don't.  Possibly some weirdness brought on by Vista.  There's a lot of that.