Fortigate GUI License

Can someone please help me out with this. I have a license on my Virtual Fortigate but when I GUI to the webconsole I'm only able to login before getting presented with this message 

"License has already been uploaded, please wait for authentication with registration servers"

Things I've already tried:

- Execute update-now from CLI

- Getting internet connectivity - verified with ' execute ping 8.8.8.8'

- After establishing outside connectivity tried the web GUI again. No dice

- After establishing outside connectivity tried the ' execute update-now' and tried the GUI again. No dice

- After each change I did restart the VM , no dice

Things I've thought about

- When making a change is there an option to save or does it save auto? With cisco you have to manually save whatever changes you make

- I need a new license? Not sure about this bc this was the same message we had when I first loaded the license and we were able to resolve it at some point. Wish I remembered how. With that some history, this VM was up and running before with the license. Everything was good and then we had to reload the VM, backed up the configs and then everything was wiped. We reloaded the VM, all the configs were still there and we were able to reach the GUI and login. But now we are getting that message. It appears that when the VM was wiped the license is still there but it just needs to be validated/activated again. I need to figure out how to do that. 

I keep looking for things online but all of the links I've tried for the Fortinet cookbook or Fortinet guides do not resolve. This is my last ditch effort. 

If anyone could assist I would greatly appreciate it. 

Thank you

V/R