\ / : * ? " < > |

You're the network administrator right? I'd simply make it a policy that the use of the above characters is against network policy, and anybody using them will have his or her rights revoked. Explain the problem to management if needbe.

Otherwise... you could get a small 9mm Pistol and threaten the lives of those who continue such policies.

Gosh I hate when people answer my questions this way, but...
You need a Perl expert, I have seen/heard of some Perl scripts that you can run from an NT box that will conver the file names over. Do I have such scripts.. no. Do I know someone that does.. no. Am I any help other then suggesting a path.. no.

But thanks for the laugh all the same.. MACs.. HA HA HA HA..

PS
I'll ask around for a script here.. we have some Perl experts.

Additional question is: weather you want the conversion to be done whenever a new file is created with such a name or you just need an application (or a Script) which you can run manually (or using the Scheduler with a specified period of time) on your system to convert file names. If you want the utility to monitor file creation and change it whenever these characters are in the file name then you need to assign a job to a professional Windows NT API programmer who will create a Program, running in a background as a Service and will monitor the NTFS filesystem File Creation System Call, intercept it and varify if there are some characters there, you don't like.
On the other hand, if you are satisfied with the manually starting such application either each time you need to convert the characters or using the Microsoft Scheduler assign the utility to run, say every 5 minutes it's not a hard task to create either a Windows Host Script or as was advised above with the Perl Script, providing that you have a

... Perl Engine on your system (which is free).
As a part of my Perl Language Lerning Project I created a program which substitutes the filename characters in the path and all subdirectories to other characters. I can send it to you by e-mail if you wish. It will take some time though to change the script so that it would maintain a text file like:
\ pattern1
/ pattern2
: pattern3
...
and change the filenames with the characters in the left column to specific patterns on the right and then, when needed, reverse them back for your creative guys to enjoy their original file names. But this part I won't do for free because it migh take 2-3 hours to create this utility and test it. Send me an e-mail to stouk@home.com and I will send to you my original 100% working Perl Script. You might modify it as you like yourself, this will be easier than create a new one from scratch.

r u sure they are not just kidding around?

Tell it is too complicated, not cost effective and tell them as well to get a life

Sorry I am not being of much help but I think it is really funny