Problems with External Monitor on a Laptop

I've been having a weird problem when I hook my exernal display up to my laptop.  It's a Samsung monitor, don't know the exact model number, and for the most part it works fine.  But I have an issue when the display goes to sleep.  I have my laptop set to put the display to sleep every fifteen minutes.  Sometimes when I wake the display, the display will blow everything on the screen up so that it's huge (like 10x normal size or something).  If I then put the computer to sleep and wake it, everything goes back to normal, but all open windows and applications are moved way out of place from where I usually keep them, often barely on the screen.
I've never had this issue with a laptop/display setup before, and I was wondering if anyone had any idea of what might be causing it, or how I could fix it?  I feel like there's probably a setting somewhere I'm just not thinking of.  Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks!

Hi there merticlese,
I would recommend resetting the PRAM and SMC as an initial troubleshooting step. Take a look at the articles below for more information.
About NVRAM and PRAM
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379
Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
-Griff W.

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