Same issue, vCenter 6.5 is on Windows 2012 VM. The fix was to first verify the status of all the services, note that on windows server all the vCenter 6.5 services will not be listed in services.msc.
C:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\bin>service-control --status --all
Running:
EsxAgentManager VMWareAfdService VMWareCertificateService VMWareDirectoryService VMwareComponentManager VMwar
eDNSService VMwareIdentityMgmtService VMwareSTS rhttpproxy vmon vmware-cis-config vmware-license vmware-psc-cl
ient vsphere-ui vspherewebclientsvc
Stopped:
VMWareCAMService VServiceManager content-library mbcs vapiEndpoint vimPBSM vmonapi vmsyslogcollector vmware-a
The issue was fixed, once the stopped services were started, note that some services will still not start, but the majority of the above stopped services will start, working with
VMware to understand which once are required and why they do not start after a reboot.
C:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\bin>service-control --start –all
C:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\bin>service-control --status –all