If you're looking for camera experts, our "
Camera Corner" forum is for exactly that. If you'd like, I can move this thread there.
Apparently, lens errors are very common on point-and-shoot cameras (my digital cameras have mostly been DSLRs, so I don't have any firsthand experience with point-and-shoots). The error mostly means that the lens extension/retraction mechanism is encountering resistance, as watermelons said.
I found an article on how to deal with "lens errors" which might help - I'd try the suggestions in the article. They couldn't hurt, anyway. The article is
Fixing a Lens Error on a Digital Camera on the CameraRepair blog. Here's
another article, specific to the Canon Powershot line. Also, if your camera is a PowerShot S100,
check this page - Canon will fix those for free.
If that doesn't help, I suspect a new camera would be cheaper than fixing the old one. I wouldn't get the cheapest thing on the market, but you can get a halfway decent point-and-shoot for less than $200 these days. If you were thinking of spending as much as $450 you could get a DSLR. For that matter, Amazon lists lots of PowerShot Pro cameras used for $125 or less.