BuddyPress

I had a similar problem when ie8 was not running in compatibility mode. I was advised to put a meta tag in my header that forces IE8 into this mode http://premium.wpmudev.org/forums/topic/ie8-compatibility-mode

This has worked for me

The intrim solution I have been advised is to put this into my header: http://premium.wpmudev.org/forums/topic/ie8-compatibility-mode (can’t get the code to show) – you can see it at this link.

This forces (sort of) IE8 to use compatibility view. Now the cropping tool appears without user intervention.

I have the same problem with IE8, however if the user enables compatibility mode the crop tool becomes visible. I have tried the instruction from odiggy and it never sorted the IE8 without compatibility view. This is just annoying as I have to tell people to enable compatibility view to use my site.