Prevent Retina iMac defaulting to 'mirror displays'

Hello! I have a Retina iMac (Yosemite) connected by Thunderbolt>HDMI adapter and HDMI cable to a Samsung 32" TV. How can I stop the iMac defaulting on start-up to 'mirror displays' (forcing it to a low resolution) despite deselecting 'mirroring' in display preferences? I will never use mirror displays and only ever need an extended desktop. Many thanks in advance

I just thought I'd answer my own question here, in case it is of any help to anyone!
I realised my iMac is just within the three-month Apple Care telephone support period, so I rang them up, and they were terribly helpful. We went through a number of elimination processes, and eventually the "don't mirror displays" preference was finally remembered by deleting the com.apple.systempreferences.plist file.
However, this was not actually the cure - one of the the processes we did to eliminate certain things was to set up a test account in addition to my own account. After doing this, naturally we had to disable auto login.
So after the euphoria of fixing the problem by deleting the .plist file, I hung up and deleted the test account and re-enabled auto login. And the problem returned!
So the problem actually lies within enabling Auto Login....so for the time being, I will leave it disabled. If anyone has an answer as to why this may be, I'd be ever so grateful to hear from you, as my dream scenario would be to re-enable it!

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