Aloha,
Early this morning, I called their support number in San Diego (619) 876-5400
listed at hxxp://www.eset.com/us/about/contact/
One of their techs, Bobby, was very helpful and was able to fix the problem in just a few minutes.
He remotely accessed my computer and ran a script that restored the permission settings on my C: drive.
Kudos to Bobby for knowing how to fix it and for eset for recognizing the problem and developing a fix for it.
Probably a good idea though for eset to make it better known to Dell users that there is a potential for this problem to occur.
I still use the Smart Security 6. I just turned off the AntiTheft for this Dell computer.
Mahalo.