I used to have to unplug the adapter, unplug the screens, replug the adapter, replug the screens after undocking and redocking my EliteBook 820 G1 with Intel HD Graphics 4400. Otherwise the screens wouldn’t be detected at all.
But today it Just Worked when I redocked it. Maybe it’s because I rebooted it while docked, like you are describing.
I have the latest HP/Intel graphics driver from the end of 2014, the originally shipped one from 2013 couldn’t detect the screens at all.