Trouble setting up .bat to launch Cream on Windows

[BG - B. A. <BAr...@dy...>]

Windows is a completely foreign environment for me to program in.  I'm
having trouble with what is, I hope, a very simple thing:

We want to modify how Cream is called.  Today, our requirement is that
the CREAM_BAT variable be set in the environment before calling Cream,
but tomorrow we might have to change other things in the environment, or
do other setup steps.  My naive assumption was that this could be done
easily in a .bat file.  The trouble is, I don't know how to make
the .bat file exit when it is done.  It hangs around as a useless icon
on the taskbar.  This is so annoying to my users that they'd rather live
without the extra features that could be added by the .bat file than to
endure having their taskbar cluttered up.  How do I work around this
problem?

Ben