Android HTC Explorer Logon Password Woes

Had an incoming call today, but when I tried to answer it ESET antivirus demanded I enter my password first.
As can be expected I was unable to do this in time to take the call. Why does the program do this?
But wait it gets worse.
I then thought I needed to make some changes to the ESET program settings to see if I could prevent it doing such a stupid action and found out I was now locked out of my own phone.
I have been using SlideIT keyboard for a few days now and when I tried to log onto my phone ESET demanded my password again.
Only this time SlideIT would not enter ANY CHARACTERS AT ALL.
I was unable to switch the phone off so I removed the battery, reinserted same, booted and found I had about 20 seconds to get into the phone's settings and try to change from SlideIT back to the default Android keyboard.
After the third attempt of removing the battery and being speedy enough I was able to get in and change to the default keyboard. When I was too slow in getting the settings ESET would revert to password logon screen but this time NO KEYBOARD would appear.
Made me quite panicky I must admit but scared the blazes out of my daughter (Trusted Friend) because unknown to me every time I removed the battery she would get a "My phone is stolen!" message from her dad.
Thing is I did the right thing and actually purchased this program about a week and a half ago. Now looks like I have to uninstall ESET antivirus and kiss my funds goodbye!
My phone is a HTC Explorer running Android Gingerbread.
It's all rather sad because I run ESET antivirus on my Desktop and my MAcBook Pro with a Windows 7 in the bootcamp partition with nary a problem ever.