SL Issues Connecting to Windows 7

Previously I was running Windows XP and one of my XP drives was shared on the network and the various Macs (Leopard) that I was running. The Macs had no issues connecting via the networking/file sharing. As soon as I upgraded XP to Windows 7, I noticed a significantly slower time to connect to the drive (a couple minutes). Once I installed Snow Leopard on one of the Macs (rest still running Leopard), that time increased to about 4 minutes to connect. This drive needs to be shared amongst PCs and Macs, and I tried to use SMB, but nothing seems to solve the issue why it takes so long to connect. All the Mac updates have been installed. How can I make it faster so I'm not sitting for 4 minutes every time I need to connect?

Thanks!