I recently bought a new laptop, MSI GX60 with windows 8 OEM.
However, it will not play any audio cd's. If i insert an audio disc (all legal bought cds), the disc drive makes spinning noise, trying to read the disc, but noting happens.
The audio disc works fine in a regular cd player, and the laptop disc drive can play regular DVDs without any problem. So it's just audio cd's that are a problem for some reason.
I've tried stuff I found on the zeb, tried the microsoft fixit thingy, it says the media is not supported or the disc is blank (which is not the case). I've tried uninstalling the drivers and rebooting, nothing helps. I've removed all CD/DVD burning software. Nothing.
The disc drive shows up in the device management fine, no errors.
I'm a bit lost here .... brand new laptop, but can't play audio cd's. Which is hilarious, because I tried my fathers old Dell desktop (7 years old now), and there the audio disc works without a problem.

The problem is most likely due to the fact that Media Center isn't activated in Win 8 like it was previously in Win 7 and earlier... Now there is a $9.99 fee to activate it in Win 8 Pro.

Regular Win 8 requires a ProPack which is a lot more expensive.

It seems that Media Player is dependent on some of Media Centers codecs.

Some file types play properly, and some don't.

I tried to install a 3rd party codec pack and it didn't help. You may have better luck.

I activated Media Center on my machine... even though I don't use it much, but it did fix most of Media Players issues... Except DVD playback of any type.

Media Center will play DVD disks and files, but Media Player won't. This is a separate licensing issue unrelated to the codecs.

You might try a free 3rd party player like VLC or Media Player Classic as a test, or to use.

Your laptop may already have a 3rd party player installed by MSI as part of their optional software.