X230 and W530 card reader problems on Windows 10

[heilong]

My X220 is running Windows 7 and has no problems with the onboard Ricoh card reader.

Now I also have an X230 and a W530, both are running Windows 10. The Ricoh card reader is detected by Windows without installing any specific drivers from Lenovo.
If I insert a card, I can access it, however trying to use "safely remove hardware" always tells me that the device is currently in use (when it's for sure not, verified using "Unlocker for Windows").
If I just eject the card without safely removing it, then if I re-insert the same or a different card, nothing happens. Seems like a reboot is necessary to bring the driver back to its senses.

I have tried uninstalling the device and its Windows-installed driver from device manager, and installing the driver supplied by Lenovo.
Installing this driver, however, does nothing. The device (whose Windows-supplied driver was just uninstalled) remains listed in device manager as "Base system device". It's not claimed by the Lenovo-provided Ricoh driver.
Lenovo lists their driver as 2.25.18.0125 from Mar 2014, however when it is unpacked, looking at risdxc.inf reveals that it's a Ricoh driver DriverVer=06/10/2013, 6.21.11.46. The inf file also lists device ids: PCI\VEN_1180&DEV_E823&SUBSYS_00011179, PCI\VEN_1180&DEV_E822&SUBSYS_00011179.
I checked the actual card reader ids (via the device manager and also a Linux LiveUSB drive), and it has matching vendor and device ids, but a different subsystem id - SUBSYS_21DA17AA. That's on both X230 and W530. This is very weird...
Ok, so I edited the risdxc.inf, adding PCI\VEN_1180&DEV_E823&SUBSYS_21DA17AA and PCI\VEN_1180&DEV_E822&SUBSYS_21DA17AA to [Ricoh] and [Ricoh.ntamd64]. To install this driver, need to use the Advanced startup Windows option, restart, choose Troubleshoot and option 7 (Disable Driver Signature Enforcement). Install the driver, which will then claim the memory card device, then restart again. But all of this seems to be useless. The driver works exactly like the one that was auto-installed by Windows. The card reader works, but you can't eject the card with the "safely remove hardware" feature. After the card is ejected without safely removing it in Windows, I can't use the card reader anymore until I reboot.

Using a Linux LiveUSB drive, I tested the card reader and there it works perfectly. So the issue seems to be with the Windows 10 Ricoh driver and/or Windows 10 itself.

For now I'm using an external USB card reader. But it would be nice to find a fix.

Does anyone experience the same problem? Or does the card reader work fine for you on an X230/W530 and Win 10?

[dr_st]

00011179 is a Toshiba subsystem ID, 21DA17AA is a Lenovo ID. Generally these things don't matter much.

I have such a device in my T430s, running Win10 with 6.21.11.46 (the version of the .sys file itself is actually 6.20.11.46). I tested today several times with different SDHC cards and could not reproduce your issue.

There are many variables though - Win10 version (My T430s is currently running a very old 1909), Windows settings (mostly related to PCIe power management), and the version of the adapter itself. Your X230 and W530 have the card reader onboard, AFAIK, whereas the T430s has it as an ExpressCard adapter - this may affect the default power and plug/unplug policies that Windows applies to it.