This is the wrong forum for this question (you posted it on the VMWare Workstation board), but this specific error usually indicates that your BIOS did not apply CPU microcode update properly (only updated a single core instead of all of them). Try booting any Linux Live CD, and look at the output of grep microcode /proc/cpuinfo – all lines should be identical (note that the Linux Live CD itself may update the microcode during bootup – you can try installing ESXi afterwards without powering off the computer; if it works, you have a BIOS problem).
