how to reset FP 2002 discussion group article numbering on Unix server?

Hi,

Our ISP recently goofed and we had to have them reinstall FP 2002
extensions in Unix. Got everything working again except for the
discussion group article numbers - now FP is re-using existing article
numbers and merging posts. I tried to reset the article counts myself
- I edited the file _vti_pvt/service.cnf, however my changes to this
file are always overwritten when I do a test posting. Our ISP refuses
to research this even though they offer FP functionality. They insist
on me telling them the details of how to manually reset the article
numbers. We are now stuck with non-functional discussion groups! I
beg you, does anybody have this information for FP 2002 under Unix?
I'll owe you if I can help.

Thanks,
Bruce