Slow network transfers from PC > Mac, Fast vice-versa

I have Two MacBook Pros and a windows 7 machine with all the storage i need for the household, the problem being the file transfer speed is too slow to stream video or copy files to/from the windows machine.

previously, we had this system set up and it worked perfectly. Since then we have had to reformat and the settings in windows that allowed the system to work have been cleared.

just to assure you guys it's not a wiring issue, i timed several transfers of a 55mb file.
on PC copying from shared folder on Mac-A -- 8.7sec
on PC copying _TO_ shared folder on Mac-A -- 6.9 sec
on Mac-B copying from Mac-A -- 17.7sec
on Mac-A copying from PC -- infinity? (it starts the transfer, estimates time, but that went on for several minutes with no progress in the bar)
on Mac-B copying from PC -- also infinite

apparently the PC can talk to the Macs without any trouble, the macs cannot get through to the pc.
any pro-tips pointers?

PS i can't seem to effectively search the forums either. As there's no (obvious) advanced search is the only option really to just sift through them all page by page?