Lock screen - password incorrect
I had the same issue. It is likely the ownership is wrong for /etc/shadow
(See section "gnome-screensaver authentication failure with incorrect /etc/shadow permissions
" of this page).
You need to sudo chown root:shadow /etc/shadow
then sudo chmod u=r,g=r /etc/shadow
See this bug report.
The interesting question is "Why ownership changed?". Because I don't remember changing it.
I could resolve this issue with the following permission changes:
sudo chown root:shadow /etc/gshadow
sudo chown root:shadow /etc/gshadow-
sudo chown root:shadow /etc/shadow
sudo chown root:shadow /etc/shadow-
Found here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1006366