ERRORLEVEL inside IF

Try using setlocal enabledelayedexpansion at the start of your batch file, and !ERRORLEVEL! inside your IF. This seems to work for me:

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
dir nul
echo %ERRORLEVEL%
if .1.==.1. (
  urklbkrlksdj - not a command
  echo %ERRORLEVEL%
  echo !ERRORLEVEL!
)