Fastest way to transfer files from PC to Laptop...?

Hook both of the CPUs/drives to the network, preferrably via a hard wire connection, and then share the hard drive that you want to transfer the files. The files can be copied using Windows Explorer at a fairly decent rate of speed.

Is this the procedure you went through to connect the two computers with the network cable (network crossover cable) -- http://www.wikihow.com/Connect-Two-Computers

Back in the old days we would connect via serial ports, but that's beside the point since almost nothing ships with a serial port anymore...

Try using an external hard drive if you have one, that is what I do. The network may be your only option though. Another thing you can do is take out the hard drive for the laptop and plug it into the desktop. Once the hard drive mounts you can copy the files you need and then replace the hard drive again.

Get an Ethernet cable, plug one end into your PC and the other end into the laptop.
Create a network between the two computers (very easy to do).
Then transfer your files over.
This is very quick (1Gbit - 125MBps).
Hope this helped.

Use a portable hard drive. They have like 160 gb of space and they are great for file transfering. Or you can get an external hard drives which are bigger and cheaper than portable hard drives because they aren't exactly portable but they have much bigger space.