NIC Driver Not Recognized During ESXi 6.5 Installation

[SteveB100]

I'm very new to the ESXi Hypervisor and would like to learn about its capabilities.  Unfortunately, the only test hardware I currently have available is an HP 2000-369WM laptop (calling this hardware far from ideal for this type of testing is an understatement).  I've tried installing ESXi 6.5 but, as anticipated, my NIC (Realtek PCIe FE Family Controller, Hardware ID PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8136&SUBSYS_3577103C) was not recognized/supported.  I was hoping to use the ESXi Customizer to include my NIC driver in the installation .iso but can't seem to find an appropriate driver .vib.  Does anyone have any suggestions?  Thanks in advance. 

[MattiasN81]

You can find the appropriate drivers here

https://vibsdepot.v-front.de/wiki/index.php/List_of_currently_available_ESXi_packages

[SteveB100]

MattiasN81, thank you for your response and the link you provided.

Since none of the Realtek drivers shown appear, to my untrained eye, to be specific to my NIC, I used ESXi Customizer to incorporate all the Realtek drivers (and the non-Realtek drivers as well) into an ESXi 6.5 custom installation .iso.  Attempting to use this custom .iso to install ESXi on my HP 2000-369WM laptop still provides the notice that 'nfs41client failed to load' and 'No network adapters were detected'.

Does anyone have any further suggestions that I might try in order to get ESXi 6.5 installed and running on my system?  

[MattiasN81 · Accepted solution]

‌I took a quick look on your laptop specs, it seems that the NiC is only 10/100.

VMware removed all compability for 10/100 nics when they released ESXi 5.0

and i dont think anyone bothered to make drivers for those nics since almost all nics are gigabit anyway

[SteveB100]

MattiasN81, all your effort on my behalf is greatly appreciated. 

If my on-board NIC isn't fast enough to run ESXi 6.5, would I be able to use a 10/100/1000 aftermarket USB-to-Ethernet adapter?  If so, which one would you recommend as being compatible with ESXi 6.5?

[SteveB100]

Looks like no compatible adapter is available.  Oh well...

[MattiasN81]

‌there are a couple of USB 3.0 nics out there that works with ESXi

http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2016/03/functional-usb-3-0-ethernet-adapter-nic-driver-for-esxi-5-5-6...

[SteveB100]

Thanks MattiasN81.  This is exactly what I was looking for!