Changing NIC driver

At present I have a Debian 3r2 box (kernel 2.2.20) with an Intel Pro/100
S NIC, the /var/log/kern.log shows the following details about the card:

May 22 09:55:03 monument kernel: eth0: Intel PCI EtherExpress Pro100
82557, 00:02:B3:EC:0F:7F, IRQ 10.

I was getting some slow tranfer rates and so decided to download the
e100 driver source from Intel's website. I successfully built it, and
then installed it through modconf. I admit that I am rather a Linux
newbie. I used to run a RedHat 5 based system years ago, but have
forgotten most of the little I had learned.

Anyway, the kern.log does show the e100 driver being loaded:

May 22 09:55:03 monument kernel: e100: eth2: Intel(R) PRO/100 S Desktop
Adapter
May 22 09:55:03 monument kernel: Mem:0xeb020000 IRQ:10 Speed:0 Mbps
Dx:N/A
May 22 09:55:03 monument kernel: Failed to detect cable link
May 22 09:55:03 monument kernel: Speed and duplex will be determined
at time of
connection
May 22 09:55:03 monument kernel: Hardware receive checksums enabled
May 22 09:55:03 monument kernel: cpu cycle saver enabled

Do I need to explicitly remove the current eepro100 driver so that its
left to load the e100 driver?

Is it right that the eth2 interface fails to detect a cable link since
eth0 has loaded it?

Thanks in advance,
Paul