Business Notebooks

Hello. I'm having a weird issue with an HP EliteBook 2540p. SD card reader only working if I start (or restart) the laptop AND there is an SD card in the reader while doing this.

Then it works just fine (read,write,format,chkdsk) until I eject the card. Upon inserting it again, I hear "device connected" sound, followed immediatelly by "device disconnected" sound and the card doesn't show as attached removable device. Card reads just fine on other systems. In order to make it work in the laptop again (until next ejecting), I have to leave the card in the reader and start/restart again.

Tested with numerous SD cards of different types and sizes, inlcuding full size SD cards as well as microSD with adapters. Also tested with Windows 7 SP1 32bit and Windows 10 32bit. Reinstalled OS fresh with disk format. Downloaded any driver I could find, including  http://whp-hou9.cold.extweb.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp46501-47000/sp46999.exe. Fully patched both OSes with recommended and optional updates. Behaviour is always as described above. I don't tink it's hardware issue because once I get it working, it works reliably for days or weeks without ejecting, I can read and write gigabytes of data and any possible test I could think of passes, except for ejecting.

==================

Edit: Just to add that now I'm 100% sure it's not the hardware, but drivers/software. Wiped the drive clean again, installed latest Ubuntu Desktop (17.10) 64bit and the SD card reader worked just fine. So, what is going on?