Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client

Recently I installed MySQL 4.1 on my W2K machine and tried to connect to it. But could not. It threw the error

Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client

Well, I was least expecting such an error to occur. Actually, this error has revisited me. Long back, when I installed MySQL 4.1 on my previous workstation, I had encountered this error. So, the solution was easy. Just change MySQL's password hashing algorithm for your password. So, how how u do that?

mysql> UPDATE mysql.user SET Password = OLD_PASSWORD('newpwd') WHERE Host = 'some_host' AND User = 'some_user';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Thats it :-)

Actually, MySQL offers a reason for the same

MySQL 4.1 and up uses an authentication protocol based on a password hashing algorithm that is incompatible with that used by older clients.

To solve this problem, you should use one of the following approaches:

• Upgrade all client programs to use a 4.1.1 or newer client library.
• When connecting to the server with a pre-4.1 client program, use an account that still has a pre-4.1-style password.
• Reset the password to pre-4.1 style for each user that needs to use a pre-4.1 client program.
• Tell the server to use the older password hashing algorithm
  Start mysqld with the --old-passwords option
  Assign an old-format password to each account that has had its password updated to the 4.1 format.