Hi,
One question, where did you install ESXi 8.0 and what kind of system do you have?
One thing that may seem counterintuitive and completely unrelated, try disabling in the machine bios (and if anything update it) those energy saving mechanisms (see the manual), previous state of power (stay off), wake on USB or other devices, seen doing "strange things" on (mostly) consumer hardware in more than one 'occasion.
Regards,
Ferdinando