Hover Pseudo Class in IE7

I was ready to kill myself. I read that IE7 supported the hover pseudo class on non-anchor elements. I had even implemented said pseudo class on the footer div of another site I'm working on. As I'm coding the front end of our yet-to-be-released eCommerce product, I can't make it happen. It's been weeks. I spend about 30 minutes every day researching the issue, monkeying with the code, and taking all manner of shots in the dark. Classy no worky. Today I found someone with the same problem ... and a solution! Apparently, the hover pseudo class will only work in IE7 if you're using a Strict Doctype. My blood surged with excitement. Finally, my lis and inputs and divs would change styles upon :hovering and :focusing even in the most backwards of browsers! I quickly alt+tabbed over to my text editor to make the necessary change. Tragedy pierced my heart. My doctype was already strict. Oh the humanity! In a panicked flurry, I copied everything above the from my other project and pasted it in to this one. Alt+tab, ctrl+r, mouse over an element. Nothing. But it must work. My hope was dwindling. I opened up several sites in several tabs and frantically began alting+tabbing - ctrling+cing - alting+tabbing - ctrling+ving - alting+tabbing - ctrling+ring. Over and over - no change. My fingers stiffened with frustration, then fell still with defeat. Then - hope. Hope called out to me between at the top of the page. I had commented out a short explanation of the template styles for our programmer. Highlight. Delete. Alt + Tab. A tumbleweed blew by my desk. No Ctrl+R this time. I took a moment and located the tiny (if not foreign-looking) refresh button, placed inconspicuously at the far-right of my address bar. I clicked it. The page reloaded. I swallowed hard and moved my mouse. Success. That's my story. Hope it helps.