hi, i'm not sure if the error message is related to what you have done
with the password or to mysqld's networking setting.
anyway, how did you change the password? did you use mysqladmin or did
you change the password field in the mysql user table without using the
password function?
usually one would change the password like this if it has not been set
before:
mysqladmin -u root password "newpassword"
or this:
mysql -u root mysql
UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD("newpassword") WHERE User="root";
if you set a password use mysql's -p switch to ask for it.
oliver