Prevent "Exit" command in script to close Cmd

I have a .bat which emits "Exit 1" in case of failure, this is closing the cmd window and prevents user to see the details of error.

I would like to force cmd to stay opened to see the messages.

I know that I could have used EXIT /B 1 in .bat to not close the cmd automatically, but only interrupt the script.

/B        When used in a batch script, this option will exit 
          only the script (or subroutine) but not CMD.EXE
          If executed on the command-line it will close CMD.exe

But the .bat is generated by a tool, so I can't simply modify it. Obviously, for the same reason I can't just add "PAUSE" in it.

I also know about "cmd /k" which avoids to close cmd after to have run a script, but it just keeps the cmd open once a script is successfully executed, if an "EXIT" function is emitted, it does not prevent cmd to close.

If your CMD calls the batch with another CMD /C xyz.bat then the exit 1 inside the bat file should not close the original CMD window, and the /C ensures that sub-CMD will close itself at the end of the BAT file if no exit was reached.

Then you can check error level for the batch and deal with whatever action you want in the top level CMD - such as timeout /t 10 && exit if you want that to close after giving user time to read the error message:

cmd /c a.bat
IF %ERRORLEVEL% NEQ 0 (echo ERROR && timeout /t 10 && exit)