Good news that you've sorted it.
Doesn't quite stack up in my mind however ... think that there was indeed something syntactically incorrect with your
rename command which is no longer the case with the simplified version.
Just experimented and found that if you put
rename c:/whatever... in a batch file rather than
rename c
whatever... then you do indeed get
The syntax of the command is incorrect. And that would be eliminated in your simplier version.
Could that have been it
RC