Second Monitor Set As Primary Not Mirrored

No matter how flashy and improved windows gets, it always contains the same amount of Microsoft stupidity that I know will never disappear from the windows platform. I have an HP laptop with the standard built in Intel graphics card. I always connect my laptop to one of my LCD monitors or lately my plasma TV. Its great. but these two problems really kill my mood:

1- when I connect them it often times forgets what my previous settings were (Second monitor set as primary, not mirrored) so i have to always go into settings and change that. For weeks it might remember those settings then out of the blue it reverses them so that the laptop monitor is actually hte primary while the TV is the secondary, or isnt checked as "Attached". What is this? In 2008 Microsoft still can't get something like this right. On one of the monitors it forgets the resolution i set it to so I have to keep resetting it.

2- When I unplug the external monitor from the laptop sometimes, like right now, the task bar becomes invisible (except for the start menu button) so the only way for me to figure out where the icons in the tray are is by mouseovering them. totally retarded. I have to restart to fix this. What pisses me off the most is concern #1. it should remember what the settings are without contantly reversing them or worse, me having to go into settings and actually tell it that there i another monitor connected. Anybody have this problem? Are there any fixes? I have already downloaded the latest driver for this built in graphics card.