Well - I've never used Windows 2000 scripting - which I think this is - but the concepts are similar in any command shell. And I don't have a Win box here either. I found this which explains most of it.

I'm puzzled by '%%~n1' - was this originally a script with arguments, of which %%1 would be the first?

I suggest:
- CD to the folder with your source files in (so you don't need all this drive and path stuff)
- make them all read-only so you can't overwrite them, or make sure you have a backup in case you do
- create a folder 'test' in that folder for the output (like Jon's script)
- try this as the output: "test\%%~nxF"

I don't know why the files are so much smaller; I would solve that afterwards.