You need to keep your wallet open and unlocked to receive compound interest, if you open it just rarely you will get your 1% yearly interest on coins not moved for 8 hours as your stash will have gained "weight" during that time, but you won't benefit from compound interest.
Staking earns you money and helps secure the network but I personally would not do it on a Windows platform, but it's just me, I keep my wallets strictly linux, compiled from source.
If you keep your wallet open 24/7, you'll get roughly 1.01%.
Can anyone confirm you actually have to open your wallet and receive the BC before staking starts? Or does it happen automatically as soon as someone send you BC?
You need to open and unlock, the little arrow bottom right reports the current staking status, if it's open but locked says "not staking" or something similar.