Phantom external Display

I've started to notice a strange symptom on my MBP 15" 2.0GHz CoreDuo.
I regular switch back and forth from home and office and when I'm in the office I have the MacBook Pro connected to an external Dell 22" display. When at home or traveling it's just the laptop with it's internal LCD.
Lately, whenever I reboot the laptop as a standalone (no external display connected) it starts up thinking that it has an 800x600 resolution external display connected. It always positions that display to the top left of the built-in laptop display. I first discovered it when I was moving up to the Apple menu and the mouse cursor would disappear. When I opened up the Monitor Control Panel, I see the option to Gather Windows as well as the Arrangement Tab. If I click on Arrangement it shows two displays connected with the orientation. I can also see the Detect Displays button which if I click on it a few times it eventually sees that there is not an external display and moves it back to the normal mode.
I even checked the System Profiler in this state, and it also thinks that there is an external display connected until I go through the sequence to clear the reference to the external display.
I recently sent the MBP back for a fan repair where they replaced the motherboard as well (unknown reason). Has anyone else seen anything like this? I'm wondering if there is something obvious I'm missing before I call AppleCare on it.
MacBook Pro 15"/CoreDuo 2GHz   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  
PowerMac G5/dual 2GHz   Mac OS X (10.3.7)  

Can someone tell me how I can close the lit and not go to sleep when an external display (plasma TV) is attached? I cannot get this working. Thx.
MacBook Pro   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

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