Ensuring strict mode in IE 8

I'm apparently triggering quirks mode (or at least IE 7 standards mode) even though I've added the strict doctype:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"&gt;

and the IE compatibility list meta:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />

I've looked at the Developer Tools window for the page, and it says that the page default is IE 8 standards mode, but still renders the page wrongly. However, changing the mode in developer tools to another mode and then switching back to IE 8 standards mode causes the page to render correctly.

Is there some other IE-specific incantation that I'm missing, or is this a known bug for IE 8 (or the IE Developer Tools)?

If it helps, here are the first few lines of the page (Sorry I don't have a link to the page, it's a proprietary product that is intended for deployment on intranets). I've checked that nothing comes before the DOCTYPE (though that apparently is no longer an issue for IE 8):

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"&gt;
    <html>
      <head>
        <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
        <!-- to override ie compatibility mode for intranets: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2009/02/16/just-the-facts-recap-of-compatibility-view.aspx -->
        <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />

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Ensuring strict mode in IE 8

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