[Plugin: NextGEN Gallery] php.ini causes strange server settings.

i apologize in advance if this question has already been asked and answered; but nothing i’ve found has resolved my issue. I’m using 1and1 for hosting; i called their tech support and they do support a custom php.ini file. They even sent me the code to set the memory_limit. I’ve found that the php.ini needs to go into the wp_admin folder not the root folder fo the site. This is where the wierdness starts. Before the php.ini file my limits in the gallery server settings are:

# PHP Memory Limit : 40M
# PHP Max Upload Size : 20M
# PHP Max Post Size : 8M
# PHP Max Script Execute Time : 50000s

After I upload a php.ini file the limits go to:

# PHP Memory Limit : 128M
# PHP Max Upload Size : 2M
# PHP Max Post Size : 8M
# PHP Max Script Execute Time : 30s

That’s regardless of the values i put in the php.ini file. For example the last php.ini file only had a single line “max_upload_size = 8M” but all four values changed and not even to what i specified. I also copied the .htaccess file with the “AddType x-mapp-php5 .php” line to my root and to every wp- folder. I also modified the gd.thumbnail.inc.php file and uncommented the “@ini_set(‘memory_limit’, ‘128M’);” line. These the 3 resolutions i managed to find but none of them seem to work to make the plugin work completely. The default settings let me upload the files i want but then i get memory errors creating the thumbnails, etc. If i put in a php.ini file the resultant settings don’t give me memory errors but i can’t upload the files i want because they are too large. So my questions are what am i doing wrong with my php.ini file that causing the strange settings afterwards? If i need to have a discussion with 1and1 what do i need to inquire about? And is there any hope for my situation? Thanks in advance.