Can't play music from external hard drive through iTunes on Windows 8?

I recenty bought a new laptop running Windows 8 with a small internal hard drive, so I don't want to store all my music on it. I backed up my iTunes library onto an external hard drive, but when I plug this into my new laptop I can't play my music no matter what I do.
I have tried:
- selecting the newly created iTunes library by pressing Shift when opening iTunes and playing a song directly through the iTunes player. It selects the song, comes up with the speaker icon next to it to indicate it is playing, but the time doesn't count down and no music plays
- I have gone into Advanced Preferences and specified the iTunes media folder location, still no songs play
- coped a single song onto my new laptop desktop and tried to play this through iTunes, Media Player and the Music app. Media player says "Windows Media Player encountered a problem while playing the file". The Music app says it can't find any music on the computer, so when I select the music folder from my hard drive, it says "Can't Play. Make sure your computer's sound and video cards are working and have the latest drivers, then try again".
I know my laptop can play sound and video as I can watch YouTube videos with no problems. I went to Windows Update, and there are no available updates, I already have every available update.
I have also plugged in a different external hard drive, with different music files on it, and have encountered the exact same problems. It seems I can't play any music at all on this laptop. I know the files are not corrupted, as I can plug both hard drives into a different laptop that runs on Windows 7 and play the music on them with no troubles. Could it be a problem with the files compatibility with Windows 8?
I can also access my iPhone backup through this iTunes library on the new computer, so I know there is no problem with my backup.

I am experiencing a similar problem in Windows 7 64bit. Since my laptop has a 128gb SSD, I have loaded my iTunes library on to an external drive. I can sync my iPhones and iPads from this library, and the songs play fine from those devices. However, when I select a song from my library, and click the play button, nothing happens. iTunes does nothing. I have also tried right-clicking mp3s in my library and selecting "Play", with no results. I do not receive an error message of any kind.
I have also noticed that some of my mp3's within iTunes denote the Time as 00:00. The same mp3's will play and register properly using other mp3 players on my computer, and they also play normally on my iPhones and iPads.
I am running Windows 7 x64 on a Lenovo T530, in iTunes 11.1.3. Everything else in iTunes appears to function normally. I can listen to internet radio stations without an issue, through iTunes, and they play as they should. I have tried three different external drives, with different drive formats, and they all have the same issue. If I copy my iTunes library back to my internal drive, iTunes will play my mp3s.
I did not have this issue with iTunes 10, so I am assuming it is something that has occured within the last few updates.
Has anyone found a fix for this? Unfortunately, I am forced to use iTunes 11 because of my iOS devices, otherwise I would revert to iTunes 10.

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