Gigabit Ethernet
 

I have a P4C800-e Deluxe motherboard with an onboard Intel PRO/1000 network connection. I would like to take advantage of the gigabit capability but it only seems to run at 10 Mbps according to the networking monitor. My father suggests that he may have needed to download some updated drivers or enabled something, but in his old age he is unable to provide specifics :D . It currently has version 8.5.14.0 drivers.

Can anyone suggest something I could try to get it working?

Well, you do understand your speed is capped by whatever speed your service provides you with, right? IE, if you're using DSL, you'll probably have 1.5mbps down at most

I am living in a college dorm and connecting to their network that is being fed by whatever huge pipe they have. The dorm I used to be in was wired for 100 Mbps but I suppose that my new room might be arranged differently... Oh well, I guess it is probably working correctly after all. Please disregard!

The ethernet port at the switch may be capped at a certain speed, to aleviate p2p or just general bandwidth bottlenecks. The ethernet port might be set to auto-negotiate and your network card will automatically operate at that level. I don't see colleges giving students internet access to the port at 100mb because frankly, there are more important things they have such a fast connection for.

we have 1 megabit and we have 5 computers on our LAN. Its more than we've ever wanted to need.

but if ya want that gigabit, somethings gotta be slowing it down. Either the wire is too small or you need to upgrade ur card.

How is what you just said relevent? The wire is too small? Think outside the box here for a minute. The school is not going to give students gigabit speeds on the network.

Well of course. I mean, how am I supposed to cram large files through a smaller wire?
Anyway, that oddly makes the wired hotspots on campus faster than the wired in the dorm...

By all means, upgrade that wire. The thicker the better. And of course use all gold contacts for dramatically improved yet natural and binarily correct digital clarity.

/sarcasm

Networks are like highway systems in that they're upgraded in phases.

A buddy who works on local campus nets has mentioned dorms are their largest P2P headache customers. Upgrading the connections just upgrades their management issues. Without expensive equipment, swapping tends to fill the available bandwidth. Sounds like your dorm is using poor-man's throttling.