>1.I can see what appear to be embedded PE files inside the main exe >file (packed with PETITE it looks like). Are these connected with the >securom protection? (some of them look like device drivers because >they call ntoskrnl.exe)
Securom uses device drivers for checking the cd. In the early days of
Securom these drivers were patched to crack the protection so they packed them and doing CRC calculation on them...

>Is there a program out there that can "rip" these PE files from inside >the binary so I can see what it looks like?
Haven't seen anything like this...but should be too hard coding it yourself.

>I also have a non-cracked exe for another version of this same game.
>Is cracing this new version hard or easy? (i.e. is it worth trying >myself or should I just wait for some crack group to do it?)
Depends on your skills
I think Securom is the easiest cd game protections out there, but
if the game is protected with triggers you have to spend some time
to find all of them which is only time consuming but not hard...
The rest isn't very hard if you compare it with Safedisc or ProtectCD, so no illegal opcodes or p-code...