ssh login fails, access denied

[Bonno Bloksma <b.bloksma@tio.nl>]

Hi,

Just did my first Wheezy install on a VMware virtual machine. I accepted the default SSH server option.
Server is running, I can log in via the VMware console both as the root user and as the regular user and use "su -" to switch to the root user.

When I use PuTTY to set up a ssh session to my server I get the login prompt. I enter the login name root or the user.
It asks me for the password and once I have given that I always get "access denied".

Cannot find anything in /var/log/syslog or messages as to why.
Cannot find anything in /etc/ssh/sshd_config that would cause this but... I might miss something.

This is the first time I cannot get into a system where I am 100% sure I am using the correct name/password and am able to test this by simply using the console.
What should I look for?

Bonno Bloksma