Changing monitor identities?

Question

Normally I only have my monitor connected to my PC (via DVI), but occasionally I like to enable my TV (via DVI->HDMI adapter) as a secondary monitor to watch films or play games. Weird thing is, whenever I connect my TV, Windows likes to think it's a good idea to reassign my monitor's identity to 2 and assign 1 to my TV. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but it means that should I decide to use the Winkey+P shortcut to disable my TV, I have to click "Projector Only". If I click "Computer Only", which would be the logical choice, Windows switches solely to my TV. I've tried swapping the cables, and even hooking up the TV after the computer has booted, and it seems like the moment I hook up the TV, Windows auto-detects the displays and reassigns identities as it sees fit.
So, my question is: Is there any way to manually reassign monitor identities, be it through a control panel applet or the registry and have them stick, or maybe tell Windows that the monitor named "SAMSUNG" is a friggin' TV or Projector and not my primary display?
Primary display: Acer AL1916W
Secondary: Samsung 32" LCD TV
Video Card: ATI HD4870 X2, Catalyst 9.12

Answer 1

Some hints for the next person (probably me in 3 months) person to have troubles with this (Windows 8.1):
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\Connectivity
That key contains information about each of the various sets of monitors that can be plugged in.  In my case, I have 3 monitors, 1 TV and a laptop screen.  This yields many possible combinations and each particular combination is listed.  The
format is A^B^C^unknown where A, B and C each reference a certain monitor.  I could have A^B, A^B^C, A^B^D, A^C^D, etc.  I am uncertain what the last item is, possibly a hash of some kind?
The first thing to figure out is which set of monitors you have connected.  In my case, I deleted all of my monitors except the laptop monitor from device manager (show hidden devices to see them when they aren't plugged in) and then plugged them in
one at a time, refreshing that registry key to see what was added.  This would let me identify what the ID was for each of my monitors.
If you look at any of those keys you'll see they have several values.  The interesting ones for me were eXtend and External which has something like A+B+C^unknown.  The data in these values cooresponds to the key right above Connectivity
at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\Configuration
In there you will find all previous monitor arrangements.
In the first set of keys (Connectivity) the monitors were "sorted" in the key name.  You may see A^B^C but you would never see C^B^A or B^A^C.  I believe this is so Windows can identify a set of monitors regardless of what order you plugged
them in.  In the second set of keys (Configuration) however, the order has meaning.  It appears that the first item in the key name is monitor #1, the second is #2 and so on.  This means that A+B+C is different from A+C+B.  In
the first case, B is monitor #2 and in the second case B is monitor #3.
Inside of each of the Configuration keys you will find several numbers.  These numbers are a 0-index into the monitor IDs in the key name.  In the example of A+B+C, A is 00, B is 01, C is 02.  Inside those keys is information about
the monitor settings.  This includes resolution, color, refresh rate, and relative position around the primary monitor.  Note, the primary monitor is the monitor at position (0,0), not necessarily monitor ID 1!
All of this information is not particularly useful however because I don't know what that "unknown" value is at the end of the key names.  I haven't tried changing the key names yet, but I am guessing that without knowing how to generate that
last value I am guessing stuff won't work correctly.  I was able to manually change the position of my monitors via registry safely, along with the refresh rate (which was one of my problems).
Tomorrow perhaps I'll give changing the key names a try and see what happens.  If lucky, the last piece of the key name doesn't need to be changed if you are just re-ordering them.  In my case, I would like my monitor 1 to be the monitor that sits
at position (0,0) (primary) but I suppose that is actually not terribly meaningful for my use case.  For many hear however, that is the holy grail to solving this problem.