WP woe continued

The only outstanding issue is related to the archive links not functioning. I think this may be related to .htaccess not being updated by WP, even though it is CHMOD=666 and mod_rewrite is available. As a result, I can’t use fancy permalinks. Others have the exact same problem. I think that this might be caused AllowOverride being disabled in the httpd.conf file, but I don’t have access to that file on 34sp.com in order to check. I’m also concerned that setting AllowOverride to all would create a security hole (although I’m happy to be corrected in my assumptions by anyone that knows more than me).
Suggestions?