I have an old Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS that makes unusual mechanical noises at power-up, resulting in a failed startup sequence with error message "Lens error, restart camera". Removing the metal enclosure and LCD screen allowed access to the fasteners holding the lens assembly in place.

Working from the left side, I removed fasteners to free the camera flash assembly.

This is where high voltage boost converters live, feeding into a capacitor (black cylinder) that takes up most of the physical volume of this module. I believe it is also responsible for boosting voltage to drive LCD backlight.

With the camera flash assembly removed, a few gears within the lens assembly are visible through small windows in the enclosure. My hypothesis is that a gearbox was damaged inside the camera, could this be my gearbox?

After removing a few more screws, the motorized lens assembly could be separated from the metal chassis and its corresponding electronics circuitry.

There are two FPC connectors on this assembly. The lower FPC connector is the start of a long and winding set of wires that splits into multiple branches and travel all around this assembly. I traced one set of wires to the motor visible in the lower-left corner, presumably driving the adjacent gears I saw earlier. This tells me the lower FPC connector has all the electrical actuator power signals as well as all wires for sensors that feed back into control algorithms on the main logic board.

Well, all sensors except for the main imaging sensor, which is in the middle of this assembly and has its own FPC connector to send data to the main logic board. The metal plate in the middle is held by three visible Philips head screws. Since I don't think the sensor is related to my camera startup failure, I'm leaving those alone. In the upper right corner is a fourth screw, securing a separate metal plate for a yet-known purpose I will explore later. Right now I have removed enough screws to pry this apart and look inside for signs of mechanical failure.