Yes, and my bad for not updating community at large.
I have further "fun" or reconfiguring the vcenter once i have moved to another vlan(CHANGE OF IP) but thats for another day.
Meanwhile, vCenter failed to start(auto or otherwise) due to missing dependency. Very Windows thing.
VirtualCenter Server service relies on the ProtectedStorage service which was removed from Win8/Server 2012.
The work around is the following (naturally at your own risk) – open regedit and go to:
\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\vpxd and the Open the DependOnService key and remove ProtectedStorage from the list.
Restart the whole WinBox and it should start without complaining.
Hope this helps. and yes This means I am running vCenter 5.1 on "unsupported" Windows 2012 Server edition. Phew!