I got my CF PCMCIA reader to work on my Sony laptop by not plugging in the card until after udev had autoconfigured the devices. It seems that there is a bug that will not let CF cards in PCMCIA adapters be mounted more than once. On my Sony, it resets the device right before the X manager starts (in this case KDE). If I wait until I've entered KDE, it works. If I try it with the card inserted, and go through boot, it doesn't work. Hope this works for you. It works for my Sony GRT170, but does not work on my Clevo M400a no matter what I do.