This post is quite old, but it has been useful for me to fix the problem described on Windows 8.
The solution from JR Utily did not work fully: in case of a reader unplugged then plugged again, there were errors on the CardTerminal instance.
So I added some code to clear the terminals list, as you can see in the code below.
Class pcscterminal = Class.forName("sun.security.smartcardio.PCSCTerminals");
Field contextId = pcscterminal.getDeclaredField("contextId");
contextId.setAccessible(true);
if(contextId.getLong(pcscterminal) != 0L)
{
// First get a new context value
Class pcsc = Class.forName("sun.security.smartcardio.PCSC");
Method SCardEstablishContext = pcsc.getDeclaredMethod(
"SCardEstablishContext",
new Class[] {Integer.TYPE }
);
SCardEstablishContext.setAccessible(true);
Field SCARD_SCOPE_USER = pcsc.getDeclaredField("SCARD_SCOPE_USER");
SCARD_SCOPE_USER.setAccessible(true);
long newId = ((Long)SCardEstablishContext.invoke(pcsc,
new Object[] { SCARD_SCOPE_USER.getInt(pcsc) }
));
contextId.setLong(pcscterminal, newId);
// Then clear the terminals in cache
TerminalFactory factory = TerminalFactory.getDefault();
CardTerminals terminals = factory.terminals();
Field fieldTerminals = pcscterminal.getDeclaredField("terminals");
fieldTerminals.setAccessible(true);
Class classMap = Class.forName("java.util.Map");
Method clearMap = classMap.getDeclaredMethod("clear");
clearMap.invoke(fieldTerminals.get(terminals));
}