Solved: IE Table Cell with text too tall when next to image cells

I have a table with a row containing my horizontal navigation links. There are three table cells. The left and right ones contain images and the center one contains the text links. In Firefox and Chrome, the images fill the table cells exactly and the row meets the next row without any gaps. But in IE, the center text section becomes taller than the desired 25 pixels and causes gaps below each of the images, ruining the look.

Below is my markup and I've attached the two images and a screenshot showing the right (FF) and wrong (IE) versions.

Please tell me how I can fix this so the gap is gone. I'm working within an existing website so I can't get rid of the table layout. Thanks in advance.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
   <title>Company Profile</title>
   <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
   <style type="text/css">
      .txt-headerlink A:link {TEXT-DECORATION: none; color: #93CAD9; 
            font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold;}
      .txt-headerlink A:visited {TEXT-DECORATION: none; color: #93CAD9; 
            font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold;}
      .txt-headerlink A:hover {TEXT-DECORATION: underline; color: #cc3300; 
            font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold;}
      .txt-headerlink A:active {TEXT-DECORATION: underline; color: #ffcc00; 
            font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold;}

      .txt-linkseparateltblue {
         font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; 
         font-size: 11px; 
         font-weight: bold; 
         color: #93CAD9; 
      }
   </style>
</head>
<body id="ctl00_MainBody" bgcolor="#ffffff" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0">
   <form name="aspnetForm" method="post" action="AboutUs.aspx" id="aspnetForm">
      <table id="Table1" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="770" align="center">
         <tr id="HeaderTopTR">
            <td colspan="4" bgcolor="#ffffff">
               <table id="tblHeaderTop" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="770" bgcolor="#ffffff">
                  <tr>
                     <td width="50"></td>
                     <td width="265"></td>
                     <td width="30"></td>
                     <td width="214"></td>
                     <td width="35"></td>
                     <td width="121"></td>
                     <td width="55"></td>
                  </tr>
                  <tr>
                     <td nowrap colspan="1" valign="top" width="50">
                        <img src="../images/art_tabend_left.gif" width="50" height="25" />
                     </td>
                     <td nowrap colspan="5" valign="top" width="665" style="background-color: #015881;
                        padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">
                        <span class="txt-headerlink" >
                           <a href="../Default.aspx" id="A2">Home</a><span 
                              class="txt-linkseparateltblue">&nbsp;|&nbsp;</span><a 
                           href="Login.aspx" id="A9">Login</a> 
                        </span>
                     </td>
                     <td nowrap colspan="1" valign="top" width="55">
                        <img src="../images/art_tabend_right.gif" width="35" height="25" />
                     </td>
                  </tr>
               </table>

            </td>
         </tr>
      </table>
      <table id="Table2" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="770" 
         align="center" style="background-color:#C0C0C0;">
         <tr>
            <td>&nbsp;</td>
         </tr>
      </table>         
   </form>
</body>
</html>

Open in new window