Create 250 PDFs from 250 MSWord documents without opening each doc?

I am using Acrobat Standard v7.0 and Windows XP.

I have a folder with 250 MSWord documents and I regularly convert these to PDF documents. Any suggestions for doing this without having to open each Word document? The MSWord documents have embedded URLs that must be live in the converted document, so the "print" option will not work because URLs are not live in the converted doc.

Some approaches I've tried:

1. Open each Word document (one at a time), click on the "convert to PDF" icon, close the document. This is the slowest method

2. Right-click on a collection of documents in the Windows Explorer window and from the pop-up menu, select "convert to PDF". While slightly faster, I can only select a few files at a time because the Windows Command Line limit is exceeded. (by the way, where can I change the options for creating the PDF in this way... e.g. specify the target folder?)

3. Looking for a command-line invocation of Word or Acrobat that will convert the files. I could place the commands in a CMD file and run the batch process. I have not been able to find such a command-line option or invocation for MSWord or Acrobat.

4. Any other ideas?

Unfortunately, installing additional software is not an option.

Thanks!