PHP Memory allocation error fix – php.ini and ,htaccess

Hi. I was hitting the 32MB memory allocation on my website and it kept getting out of memory errors, so I tried upping the memory in wp-config.php without success. I asked my host who suggested I create a php.ini file with the following code:
memory_limit = 64M
upload_max_filesize = 20M
post_max_size = 20M

and to also add to the .htaccess.ini file in the root of the site:
suPHP_ConfigPath /home/sitename/public_html

This did increase the memory to 64MB which is great, but I’m getting all sorts of errors with images not loading in some browsers and now I can’t even log in to the admin section on all of my wp sites on this shared host. I hit the log in button and nothing happens.

I’m not quite clear what’s happening here. If I revert the above fix, I’ll have to work with the 32MB limit which is frustrating.

I’m waiting to hear back from my host but does anybody have any advice?

Thanks in anticipation