i'm not a great lover of the dvdx range of things but have no knowledge of ripper. why not download DVD Shrink and DVDDecypter (both are free and full working). to use shrink you'll need nero to burn and should only need decrypter if shrink wont read the disk. hope this helps
easy-e you should be fine running 98 as your OS. XCopy (not talking about Gold or Platinum) version 1.5.2(I believe) and later was made to work with 98 & ME. As for fat32 file system, you won't have a problem backing up a DVD movie on to a 4.7gb DVD blank. XCopy will copy to 1 DVD if the movie is under the limit or split to 2 discs if it's over. I also wouldn't use a 321 product. The other suggestion about Shrink is a good one. The only differences other than 321 being problematic in both software and company is Shrink is FREE and Shrink also applies compression (user applied) where XCopy is 1:1. Max