I have downloaded RouterOS 5.11 from the Mikrotik website. I have created a virtual machine with 1 CPU and 512MB ram, 1 (1GB) IDE hard drive and two E1000 nic cards. I start the virtual machine, try and boot from the ISO that I downloaded nothing ever happens. Virtual machine keeps trying to boot from PXE, I suppose doesn't recognize the ISO as an OS.

Can someone offer me any advice on how to get this loaded on the vmware esxi 5? Thanks for your help in advance.

Have you attached the ISO from local client? If so try with copying it to a datastore and attach the ISO from datastore to the VM.

I have only tried from the datastore and its not working.

OK, so I tried loading ISO from the local disk, and I was able to install the RouterOS