Olympus C5050 lens

remove the 11 screws that hold the clamshell body together and remove the 4 screws that hold the plastic lens assy onto the chassis. Once you get the screws loose, you need to release the 2 ribbon cables that go from the lens to the camera chassis. When these are released you can pull the lens out far enough to get to the 2 screws that hold the CCD board to the lens. Once these are removes, the lens can now be pulled from the chassis. now remove the 3 screws that hold the lens assy together, they are all in the same direction and the one screw on the side that holds the lens sensor clip on. once these are all removed, carefully pull the 2 ribbons through the outer case while lifting the outer case straight up. Now you have the bare lens assy. It is in 3 pieces. The outer part and the inner part remain on the same plane, while the middle part that has the gear on it twists counterclockwise as you look at the back of the lens. If you cant twist this piece, your lens is jammed and youll have to work to get it off. Normally the lens can be retracted by turning the exposed drive gear on the lens assy, but it is very stiff, you can work it back and forth finding the rough spot and maybe work it out, but if the lens was compressed without motor power, you probably knocked the inner shell out of its helical track, a,nd now the guide pins are buried into the relatively soft plastic outer shell. It is a very labor intensive job but it can be done if you have a worthless camera and are not afraid to give it a go. you can sometimes buy complete lens assy's on Ebay for 50.00. I have fixed about 3 of these but Im on one now that is really frozen, maybe too far gone.

When I said sell on eBay I meant of course for parts - I think I got about $100 for my old non-working 3030

Sell your camera on eBay and get a new one unfortunately. I'm in the same position - its the third time the lens mechanism has failed on similar models - the two previous ones were C-3030s.