Tab like structure not showing porperly in ie7

[kr1976]

I have created tabs using <ul> <li> using display inline. The structure is like <ul ..><li .. ><a ..> ...Images has been used in <li> & <a> tags to make it have a feel like tab which has a active & inactive state using CSS. It working fine in Firefox2. In IE7, if the tab like structure is a single line then its working fine, but when tabs are coming n multiple lines, the 1st tab of the 2nd row is not displaying properly with the images used to give it a feel of tab. But for that particular 1st tab if we apply display: block then it works fine. But based on the application, we are not able to check which tab will come to the 2nd line because of the user input. Attached are the screenshot from both browsers. For IE7, the tab generated on 2nd row doesn't show any images around it, but all have same CSS and html code involved.
Is there any probable reason for not showing up in IE7.

[invision2]

Can you please post your code or a link, I'll try and help.

Is the code valid?

[Centauri]

Using inline display for these type of menus can be problematic, and result in heights not being able to be set. If both the <a>s and <li>s are floated (which will naturally turn them into blocks) it would probably work better.