I built a music server on the Intel NUC D54250WYK-H1, running Windows 8.1 Pro and JRiver MC20. It works very well.
Recently I tried to add an external optical disc drive (via USB), and after much research, setting changes, registry hacks, cannot get it to read discs. Something is missing.
The OS recognizes the ODD (it shows up in Device Manager), it simply does not read from discs (audio CD's). I access it from Remote Desktop to manage it.
I tried the ODD itself on my Surface 3 Pro, and it worked as expected.
The main difference (between the Surface and the NUC) I can see is the lack of Intel Serial IO DMA Controller on the NUC. Could that be it?