netsh disable works intermittently

We have two Windows 2003 SP 2 boxes with two NICs (one to backbone one
to internet). There is also loopback that has a virtual ip like
192.168.1.5 for load balancing. During bootup the route print / metric
order for the loopback low a low metric, which means the box is not
available on the backbone (not pingable). So in order to get this to
work, we have to disable the loopback on shutdown with a batch file.
Then after booting the script enables the loopback.

This is the command that runs in a .cmd file:

call netsh interface set interface "LoopBack" disable
ipconfig /all >> reboot.txt

For whatever reason, sometimes it disables, sometimes it doesn't. I
tried outputting the result to a file like this call netsh interface
set interface "LoopBack" disable > disable.log. but this seemed to
create problems and also not to make it work.

We also tried to change the bind order of the loopback and it still
comes up with a low metric. We also are not allowed to add a hard
metric in the ip config.

I'd appreciate any ideas as to how to make this more robust or make it
just work 100% of the time.