Thank you all for the quick responses and suggestions.
A guy, i tried both of your methods and neither seemed to do me any good. i tried the second method three or four times for good measure and when i reactivated my extended monitor, it went back to what it was doing.
I should specify that this wasnt happening a few days ago and currently its only happening with firefox.
I also have this problem with a program called 3ds max but its a little different. In max, for those not familiar, there are windows that can be opened in it(as an example the curve editor, material panel ect.). when i open these windows it does one of two things. A. it opens the new window on the secondary monitor, or b. it opens them off screen and in which case i have to fudge around with the monitor position settings to get them visible.
Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
also, both monitors are connected to an Nvidia Geforce gtx 285. both monitors are plugged into dvi ports. main monitor is a 21 inch Samsung, and the secondary is a 22 inch hdtv Samsung. i dont know if this makes a difference.