Network not able to run at full speed

I recently moved a computer to another room across the house and was not able to get it to work on the network. I belive it to be a problem with my cables or with the strength of the signal put out by my switch. I set the computer up and tried to access the network/internet and it will only send and not recive packets. The cable is two 30 foot home made cat5e cables using all 4 pairs that I cut the ends off and spliced together. The cables worked fine before I placed them together and I am skilled enought to splice the cables together and have check them over 10 times with a multimeter and all wires are good. The cables does not work with the two other computers closer to the switch either. I thought that my switch may not be giving a strong enough signal because it isnt the most expensive brand, it is an Amigo alw-3024 I got off pricewatch. I contacted a friend that just got a new switch at his house and wanted him to bring his by along with a store bought pice of 50 foot cable to see if any of that will fix it and he said he had a slimiar problem once and turned the computer onto base 10 full duplex and it work so I tried it and that made the network work on that computer. I dont understand why it will not opperate on 10/100 but will on base 10. My was not able to check his switch or cable yet but decided to put this post up to see if anyone could shead some light on my situation.

Set your NIC to auto negotiate or 100/Full.

Your NIC might have a problem negotiating with the switch.. I've seen this happen with Cisco switches before but I'm sure it can happen in low end switches too.

Do you have a cable tester that is designed to test the cable instead of just a multimeter? I've seen connections go through cables, but still not work because of a fault/break.

For a 1.50 you can buy a barrel connector at a Radio Shack or Home Depot/Lowe's/etc.
You'll just need to put 2 RJ45 jacks on in standard ethernet and use the connector.

I haven't had luck getting more than 1 barrel connector to work in a series.

It's not shorting out where you spliced it? It's never really recommended to split cables for networking.

It is at least a CAT5 cable? Cat3 will only run at 10mb.

Not true - He's going to a switch so the cable should not be crossover. Only if he was going direct PC to PC would a crossover be needed.

Mike.