Hi fr33tux! Sorry for the late response and thanks to those responsible for adwcleaner!
adwcleaner_5.023.exe works in safe mode with networking. As mentioned previously it also works by renaming adwcleaner_5.023.exe to adwcleaner.exe and the same thing with .021 This renaming ws suggested by bamacola's post on the download page.
I'm running XP Home SP3 and latest Avast Antivirus with latest definition update.
Anything else I can do to help let me know.