I am building a new vmware lab to use for study and have multiple freshly installed ESXi 5.1 and 5.5 hosts. I cannot get the vsphere client to log into these 5.x hosts, I get the "bad user name or password error". I am using root and a known new password (the password works fine when logging on to these hosts via the direct console and via esxcli) but I cannot get logged into either the 5.1 or 5.5 hosts via the vsphere client.
These are fresh installs with no AD authentication set up or anything special.
In my troubleshooting, I decided to install a ESXi 4.0 host to see if I could log into it and YES I can log into this host just fine with both the vsphere client 4x and 5x versions! But still have no luck logging into the ESX 5.x flavors. I have tried disabling the firewalls, etc... with no joy. Has anyone experienced this issue or have any tips? I have also tried different browsers (chrome and IE) and OS versions (Xp and Win7) and get the same results and error of bad user name and password. I can ping the hosts just fine, I just cant log in.... Thanks for any help!!!!!