I don't want to invest in another motherboard etc. until I know it will work, of course. I'd also like not to have to go the SCSI route as I have a lot of sata drives lying around.

I did some back reading on the script that has been posted. (shoulda done that first). I will try that, but honestly I'd rather someone posted up a sata card that was just compatible out of the box so all that was not necessary. If I have to buy an extra card or a different motherboard to avoid all that it would be nice. No disrespect meant to the genious work behind the script tho!

1) Setup a single SATA with no RAID (the MB uses NVIDIA Geforce6100 chipset for storage).
2) Installed an Intel Pro/1000 NIC (the onboard is not supported)
3) Installed ESX
4) On the first reboot, I selected the Service Console only (troubleshooting mode) boot option.
5) Let the host boot up and logged in.
6) Edited the file /etc/vmware/pciid/sata_nv.xml - change the last entry to use a device ID of 03f6 (and I updated the device name to MCP61 SATA Controller). I was able to determine the device ID by running lspci (since your MB has the nVidia nforce 560 chipset (yes/no?) you can run lspci | grep "nVidia" and you should see an IDE Nvidia controller that is an unknown device - make a note of the device id and you'll update sata_nv.xml to use that device id).
7) After saving the file, I ran esxcfg-pciid
8) Rebooted and the controller came up fine.

I did have to re-format the default vmfs partition with vmkfstools -C vmfs vmhba32:0:0:x, as the VI client did not see any free space on the drive. In hindsight I would not create a VMFS partition during the install next time I do this.

The PC has been running an x64 Windows guest for the last few days without any issues.

I'm not a Linux guy by any sense of the word, but can muddle my way through things as I need to. What I'm wondering is if there was a problem with the install or a reason why I don't have this folder. Either way, is there something I need to or can do to correct for this? Or do I just reinstall and try again?

For reference, I'm a home office base tech who had work pay for a lic that I could load on a spare PC at home. It is nothing special, but other then not mounting root, I don't see any other impediments. The SATA controller is the Intel 82801EB (ICH5). The install and the troubleshoot mode have no issues with it, so I'm hoping it is the same situation others in this and similar threads are fighting with.

Thank you to any one who can help.