IE6 link colors & CSS override (vs. Firefox)

The scenario:

For this example running current IE6.02 Update version SP2 and Firefox
1.5b2 on XP SP2

Internet Options > Colors >Unvisited/Visited colors are picked.

Everything in IE Accessibility dialog is unchecked - e.g. "ignore colors
specified on web pages" is unchecked.

In my web page I have different link colors set by CSS. However when my
web page renders in IE, the color for the border around the images,
indicating they are links, is not properly overridden by CSS. But at the
same time the color of text links are overridden correctly in IE.

Why the difference in IE?

Note my CSS link color overrides for both text links and image links
work fine in Firefox.

On a related note in IE I see a hover color can be enabled by check box,
and a color picked. So can IE's hover color setting be overridden? And
if so can different "hover" overrides be applied to different objects on
the page (via CSS and class). See my HTML below

Example of my CSS follows:

<style type="text/css" media="screen">

BODY { color: white }
A:link { color: 66CCFF; }
A:visited { color: CC66FF; }
A:active { color: CC66FF; }
A:hover { color: white; background-color: #0099cc; text-decoration:
#000000;}

..override a:link { color: CC66FF; }
..override a:visited { color: 66CCFF; }
..override a:active { color: 66CCFF; }
..override a:hover { color: blue; background-color: #0099cc;
text-decoration: #000000;}
</style>

HTML with image where IE does not apply the CSS link visited color:

<tr align="middle">
<td>
<a href="bigphoto.html" title="Example: photo1" alt="Example: photo1">
<img src="images/smallphoto.jpg" /></a>

</td>
</tr>

HTML showing override object:

<td class="override" align="center" bgcolor="006600">
<font size="1" color="white" face="helvetica, arial">
<b>
<a href="/contact.html">Contact Page</a>
</b>
</font>
</td>


Appreciate any suggestions.
Woody