Wow...this works. I had to do it a number of times and was afraid it wouldn't work. I finally hit the bottom of the camera on a stack of paperback books. Had to do it about 3 times...the lens slowly retracted. Now it works. AWESOME. Thanks!

IT WORKED!!!!!! The "hold the power on and smack it on your left hand fairly hard a few times" method worked great! Thank you, thank you, Gordon

This is amazing. We also had this lens retracting problem. A few subtle whacks on the bottom of the camera and it was back on line. Great, thanks. R&J

I had this problem with my sony w5. I don't know about whacking it on the floor but what I did was turn off the camera while at the same time using my thumb to exert a bit of pressure on the lens pushing it in. I was careful not to force it too much and after the third attempt it worked and the camera has worked fine since.

The whack on the back with the flat of my hand worked for me...had to do it a couple of times. Thanks!

The wacking technique really worked!! A gentle wack with my hand on the bottom of a Sony P200 solved the problem.

Whacking worked like a charm. I used my desk though, didn't leave me with a sore palm. ;)

whacking on the bottom didn't work with my W7 but it worked when my husband did whacked it on the back against his open palm.

Hello everybody I used the wacking method, and after the second pretty hard wack with the palm of my left hand it worked. Thank you to the genius who found that solution, it saved me an expensive repair job. -Claude

This worked for me, too. Gently pressed the lens back in while turning it off. Gave it a couple solid hits on the palm of my hand, then took a picture. It works great now. My mom always said if something doesn't work, give it a good swift kick to fix it.