Posted by Kyle Gleed, Sr. Technical Marketing Architect, VMware
Good news! The Auto Start bug introduced with 5.0 Update 1, which broke the VM Auto Start feature on the free version of ESXi, has finally been resolved. VMware released the ESXi patch "ESXi500-201207001" on July 12, 2012 which includes the fix.
Installing the patch does require a reboot of the host so be sure to coordinate the downtime.
You can download the patch from here: http://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal
You can review the bulletins and image profiles included with the patch from here: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2019107
For help installing the patch check out this blog on ESXi Patches.
Happy Auto Starting 
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Too strange it is not documented in release notes, or did i miss it? Anyway this fix is much appreciated.
According to http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/07/vsphere-hypervisor-auto-start-bug-fixed.html we have updated a cluster to ESX 5.0.0 768111 , the update manager shows all patches and updates applied.
Still I can’t choose any auto-start options in the Config section, all greyed out… what am I missing here?!
You didn’t miss anything. I don’t know why why they didn’t document it. Likely an oversight…
Thank you.
The patch is not found in the patch portal.
Интересно, прикольно, супер
In the bug fix notes, you will find reference to the fix:
•PR 853333: Virtual machines fail to autostart on ESXi 5.0 U1 host assigned with free Hypervisor license. The following message is logged in the hostd logs:
Throw vim.fault.RestrictedVersion