help me transfer data from my mac to PC

I have most of my media on a mac formatted external HD that I use with my macbook. I want to move that data to my new PC for HTPC purposes and to have a backup of the files.

Initially I networked the two together wirelessly and was able to transfer a little bit of the data over. Now for some reason my macbook does not show up on my PC. I thought NBD I will just buy a ethernet crossover cable because it's cheap and transfers faster. I got the crossover, and my PC sees the wired connection but I cannot for the life of me get it to change from a public network to a private one and thus cannot transfer shite. My only other option is to manually dropbox all of this stuff 2 gigs at a time. Please help me fix it so that I can at least use the crossover cable or suggest a better way. Thanks