I'm looking for some advice. My mom had this Samsung HLR4266, making a bunch of noise, diagnosed as needing a new color wheel. She had a friend whose son said he could put one in for her. He did, the noise ended, but the TV is out of focus. He obviously wasn't a professional. Mom went ahead and cut her losses and bought a new TV. She asked me to get rid of her old one.

I talked to a repairman (he never saw the set) who said that there was some sort of code that should have been with the new color wheel that needed to be entered somewhere on-screen. Tough to do as the screen isn't readable. After scounting the internet I saw the "mute 1-8-2" instruction to get to service screens, which don't do much good as theyre barely readable as well. I haven't even talked to the guy who put in the color wheel to see if he even has such "codes". Is this thing worth pursuing as I can have the set for whatever it costs, or not worth the trouble?
Any advise is appreciated.

After replacing a color wheel people sometimes need to adjust the Index Delay and CCA. Both normalize the colors if necessary. And those are the numbers they are referring to. They are not for focus. So you need to find out what the "friend" touched inside the tv. There is a focus ring and maybe he hit it? Post a pic if you can as people here may be able to give a diagnosis with seeing the problem.

Someone posted a link for free service manuals, so check it out and see if there is one there for your model tv. If so, try doing the Index Delay and CCD adjustments, may help, but I don't think that's the whole problem.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1172752

I can't even do on screen adjustments because I can't read anything on the screen. Its way too blurry. Any idea where the focus ring might be?

I doubt he hit the focus ring ... you have to really turn it a lot (deliberately) to make any huge difference. I mean, it's POSSIBLE ... but it seems unlikely to me.

What I would look at, as mes444 suggested, is the Index Delay and then the Actuator Gain. Again, might be hard if you can't see what you're doing though. Any chance you could post a picture of how blurry it is? That might help us diagnose.