Hi, John; welcome to our community!
It sounds as though you managed either a partial or a complete removal of Norton from your Win8 machine, but for some reason it was not able to complete the reinstall (or perhaps even get the program properly downloaded). What I would suggest, if you have not already done so, is to try downloading the current version of Norton 360 fresh from the Norton website ( http://us.norton.com/downloads-trial-norton-360 ), installing it, and activating using the key from your 3-copy license.
If that doesn't work for any reason, let us know and we'll walk you through a more thorough remove-and-reinstall process.
If it does work, please let us know as well! I would also encourage you to register your license by establishing or connecting it to your Norton Account, as this will allow you to free up an install you're not using, to transfer it to a new device you might purchase at a later date (etc.)
Good luck, and please keep us posted!
V/R,
--DistEd2