Drive Genius showed me a bunch of corrupt prefs. Deleted them, re-downloaded, rebooted, repaired permissions, rebooted and I now have a registration screen. So, all seems good.
Odd since the system is brand new. Though I did hit a snag where installation of the OS failed. Took several failed tries to run the installer before I found a suggestion to zap the P-ram, which finally allowed the installer to run again, cleanly. Maybe something system-wise was damaged by those failed instal attempts.