The first thing to remember is that the bank feeds need to be renewed every few months. When that's the problem, though, you should see something in the non-working feed that indicates it needs to be done. (That said, by stopping/restarting them, I guess you mean to the extent that you're authorising the set up via the bank, so that would cover that!).
If that isn't the problem, don't forget to check Xero's bank feeds status page - sometimes these things DO go wrong! The page can be found here: www.xero.com/blog/bank-feed-status/
When refreshing them, in my experience they don't start up again straight away; I just work on something else until they do.
If all else fails, though, you shouldn't need to input the transactions manually. You should be able to pull the transactions down from the bank in a format that will allow them to be imported into Xero. (Look for a CSV or 'Excel' export option on the bank). What you do download may need to be tweaked to make it suitable for importing, though.
__________________
Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)