Weird characters (´╗┐) at the start of a batch file [duplicate]

I am working with batch files in Windows, using both Notepad, and Notepad++. When I run the batch files, which all start with @echo off, I see the first line (when running on two separate machines) reading ´╗┐@echo off, and then all the REM lines below it appear as well.

I have tried changing the encoding in Notepad++, but it claims they are already at UTF-8 encoding, which appears to be correct.

What do I need to do to get these files to run properly?

It looks like the DOS ASCII encoding of the Byte Order Mark for UTF-8 (0xEF 0xBB 0xBF): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark

In Notepad++ try encoding it as "UTF-8 Without BOM" or as plain ASCII. I think the use of BOM for UTF-8 is discouraged for this reason, it's not exactly backwards compatible with ASCII.

Turns out it needs to be set to ANSI encoding to work properly. To set this, I chose Encoding->Encode in ANSI.

To figure this out, I tried to create a batch file from the command line.

echo @echo off > batch.bat
echo REM Some comment... >> batch.bat
echo echo Hello world! >> batch.bat

I then opened this file up in Notepad++, and checked the encoding in the lower right corner, which read ANSI as UTF-8. I don't know why it adds that last bit, but it seems to work now.