First the pertinents of each program and OS.
I have Windows 7 home premium SP1 running VLC 2.1.0 Rincewind. I have the MacBook Pro running OS X El Capitan with VLC 2.2.1 Weatherwax.
When I open VLC on my Mac, this is what I see:
When I drag and drop files into that, I can start and stop the files via hot keys. The most important part of this aspect is that if I start a video file and stop it for any reason, it will start right back up where I left off. I can only do this on the Windows machine occasionally. In order for this to work I have to restart the file from folder, and it doesn't always work. Is there any way I can get VLC to work like this on Windows?