Lens cover closed

This is easy to fix. in fact, i just did it on my camera about 2 minutes ago and came back to this post because i was originally looking for a solution myself. anyway, you have to be a little bit rough with the camera to fix it. on the outer lens cover you will notice that there is a metal cover on top of the plastic slider. you need to pry the two apart. there is some seriously sticky tape that is holding the metal cover to the plastic, so you need to be careful that you don't rip the whole thing off. once inside you will see a copper contact that (when you slide the lens cover) makes contact with another piece of metal. when i took a look at mine, it was covered in a bunch of lint. i used a q-tip to clean both contacts and then made sure that they were properly aligned. after that, i slid the lens cover back down and voila! works everytime now. use some superglue to put the metal cover back on again.

I'm just shooting in the dark, but have you tried taking the batteries out then putting them back in again. Also, you might want to look through the Sony website for an e-mail address that you could wite a question and/or ask for help/advice.