Resolution Change Upon Lid Close

Dell Latitude D810
Windows XP Pro SP3
Symantec AntiVirus

Okay so for a while now I have been messing with my display settings attempting to connect my laptop to my television and achieve a good picture. Now I have finally succeeded and as it should be my laptop screen's resolution changes when I connect it to the tv and changes back when I disconnect it. The problem I am having is that when my laptop isn't connected to the tv, when I close the lid to my laptop the screen resolution changes and when I open it the resolution changes back to normal. The only reason I know it is changing is because my icons move when it happens and there is a lag in the desktop appearing. This is kind of annoying is there a way to prevent this from happening? Some setting I changed on acciddent that causes this?

 

Can I ask why you have to change resolutions when you connect to the TV? I'm not familiar with XP laptops but on the W7 laptops I've used the secondary screens resolution can be different when it's not set to duplicate displays. Think dual monitor style setup.

 

Well the S-video connection to the television from the laptop is a live feed with no transition at all. so whatever the resolution is on the laptop will be the resolution on the television and since I am using an older television the max. resolution it can handle is less than that of my laptop so I have to lower the resolution of my laptop to make the picture on the television fit (my ATI Video Card Software does this automatically for me).

Maybe the resolution isn't changing when I close my lid, maybe the icons are just moving around? If that is the case, or the prior, what can I do about it.