Now, I dont really recomend this, so "dont try this at home" it will probably void your warranty.
My lens was stuck open and I would get a "Focus Error" whenever I turned on my camera and when it turned off I would hear the motor like it was trying to close the lens but it stayed out.
Since the lens is in two parts and the bottom part rotates when moving the lens in and out, I grabeed it and twisted it very hard (it was not easy to do) i heard it click and turned on the camera.
The lens finally moved again, and went in and came back out but not in the right position so i played around with this some more and then it would say zoom error whenever i tried to zoom, but it would open and close correctly. after about an hour of forcing it to go where i wanted it finally started working mostly correctly (i do hear a slight grinding noise from the motor now when i zoom in lol)

Now in the process of this i had gotten the lens a bit dirty so i cleaned it with a q-tip and alcohol and i think some of the alcohol found its way inside the lens, because all the picures were blurry and i could see inside the lens looked very odd. So i turned it on and put my blow dryer in front of it for about 5 minutes with the zoom all the way out, then did the same with the zoom all the way in and it dried the alcohol or condensation (whatever it was) right up!

now it works perfectly (well except the slight grindidng sound lol)

Katrina, April 2007

Your lens mechanism had jumped a cog on the gears,your method is not the best way to fix it, but hey.... it worked for you ..... good luck and I hope it continues to work well for a long time !

Pete, April 2007