When rebooting after a crash, ESX usually creates a vmkernel-zdump file in the /root home directory. This is a compressed file that has an image of core and a chunk of the /var/log/vmkernel log file. The first thing to do is get the log file from this dump file
[root] vmkdump -l vmkernel-zdump-101409.14.18.1
created file vmkernel-log.1
and look at the last few lines to see if you can get any hints from the last log entries or the stack trace.
You have to pay for vSphere with its various modules and extra features but not to use the vSphere Client to connect to a free ESXi.
I think where you may be getting the license message from is although ESXi is free, you still need to request a free license key from VMWare.
Login to your ESXi box with vSphere Client and go to Configuration -> Licensed Features -> Edit.
If you are set to evaluation mode, that is what you are getting the license warning from.
VMWare should have emailed you a license key when you signed up on their website to download ESXi. If not, you can go through the download steps again and the license key should be on one of the pages.
For me, if I go to https://www.vmware.com/products/esxi/ hit Download, login with my free VMWare account, then on the page with all of the download links, at the top of the list is my ESXi License.
The reason you are seeing the license message about vSphere is that in the Evaluation mode, some of the extra features that are only available with vSphere are enabled, once you enter a free ESXi license, those will be disabled and you won't get prompted anymore.
Also, you can use the vCenter Converter in the standalone mode (runs off of your workstation) for free with ESXi. This tool is immensely useful for moving VMs on and off of ESXi. http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/.
Best Answer
vmware converter will be the simplest way to do it. Once you have ESXi built and the vms copied to a location, just launch converter, you will be asked for the source machine then to give it a destination, that will be your ESXi server, then follow the steps, even if the import fails it will not affect your source vm.