Regarding the 2018 update 18 patch, we are finding on multiple systems that a reboot is necessary to start the ACF service again. We're not entirely positive the reason. The coldfusion-out.log I'm looking at shows ACF stopped on March 21, 2023 and started on Jul 18, 2023. We were definitely up during that time period and the server was rebooted between now and then for Windows Updates. But not seeing anything showing any sort of issue stopping the service from starting. I wasn't able to find anything specific on the first system either, but didn't specifically look at the dates either.

Maybe not your issue, but on 2018 I've found that the installer usually starts the cf service under my account (person running the install). Services control panel looks like the service isn't started, because it's not the one it expects. In an admin cmd prompt, cd to <cfinstallrootdir>\cfusion\bin, type cfstop, press enter, and wait for that cmd to complete, then use the Services control panel to start cf normally. This doesn't seem to happen any more as of CF 2021, it starts it using the correct user, but I usually do that same procedure anyway, just in case.

Thanks for the feedback @Dave Merrill. By happenstance, one of our team members also ran into this last night and decided to do some more digging. He ended up finding the solution at https://www.carehart.org/blog/2016/9/6/solve_common_problems_with_CF_updates_in_10_and_above under "Another gotcha to beware, when CF is started by the manual installer". It essentially does what you stated, except use the task manager to kill it.