Why do I get a 401 error in git when pushing changes to github?

Question

I get the following error when trying to push changes to github from the cygwin command promt on windows xp.

$ git push Password: [my-password-here] error: The requested URL returned error: 401 while accessing https://[username]:github.com/[username]/[repository-location]/info/refs

fatal: HTTP request failed

Searches from google seemed to point at changing the path to the certificate file on windows, which i had already done in order to clone the repository.

Answer 1

Turns out that my password is quite secure and contains the '£' symbol. To get this on my keyboard it's Shift+3 when typing my password into the command prompt it was producing a '#' symbol. My keyboard settings are correct I'm guessing this issue is due to the cygwin window.

My solution was to change my github password so it doesn't contain this character