SOLVED. I hope this saves someone some time. OK, in ESX non free Vsphere , Bridged networking does not work as in other VM’s. Rather than choosing standard bridged, you have to choose the vmnet0 from the bottom and not bridged. Now it works.

via VMware Communities: SIMPLE. Unable to network Vsphere in….

Arghhhhh!  Spent three hours on this…  This solution worked although I though I did have the VM originally set to vmnet0 when all the network connectivity weirdness began.