CSS wraps content div under menu

[David_AH]

Hey all, I seem to have gotten myself into a bit of a CSS jam. I converted my site to a tabless layout, and now I find that in IE 5.5 and lower, the main content window wraps below the horiz menu when the screen resolution is below 1024x768. I need a way to force it create a horizotial scroll bar without using fixed positions (this ruins things for the footer). The CSS I'm using is below.
Any help at all would be greatly appricated.

The main cotent window is col2, while col1 is menu, and
col3 is right side.

Thanks,

David

body { margin: 0px;
color:black;
background:#f0f8ff;
font-family: sans-serif;
font-size:16px;
}
.footer {
background: transparent;
color: black;
text-align: center;
clear: both;
padding: 6px;;
}
P.big:first-letter
{ font-size: 150%; color:#800000;
background-color:white;
}
#main {

margin-bottom: 1em;
padding: 0.5em;
min-width:600px;

}
h1 {
width:100%;
margin: 0px;
text-align: center;
color: #333399;
background: #FFF;
}
#col1, #col2, #col3 {
float: left;
padding: 0 1%;
margin: 2px;
min-width: 150px;
}
#col1 {
border: solid 1px black;
width:150px;

}
#col2 {
float:left;

border: solid 1px black;
width:700px;
min-width:500px;
padding: 5px;
}
#col3 { width:150px;
min-width:150px;
border: solid 1px black;}
#contents {
min-width: 23em;
}
.block
{
color:black;
background:white;
margin: 5px;
padding:4px;
border: solid 1px black;
float: left;
whiti-space:wrap;

}
img
{
border:0px;
}

a:link {text-decoration:underline;color:#000000; font-weight:bolder;
background:transparent;} /* unvisited link */
a:visited {color: #000000;font-weight:bolder; background:transparent;}
/* visited link */
a:hover {color: #333399;font-weight:bolder; background:transparent;}
/* mouse over link */

[Longhaired Genius]

It's not wise to create you pages with a 1024x768 window in mind. Even people who are running their monitors at 1024x768 are probably running their browsers unmaximised. So most people will still be seeing your site in a window about 800px wide.

I preview my CSS formatted pages at about 760px - 800px wide and let them expand to fit wider windows.