xp/vista apps

hi
I have a hp pavilion notebook with vista pre installed. The techs at HP told me that I cant duel boot with XP Pro ( so far they are right). The bios dosnt have the option to run in ide mode so im thinking slipsream to install sata drivers durin xp install ( that should be a project in itself ). I tried a few emulators and changed compatability mode in vista to run my xp compatable apps. No good. I have expensive engineering software and the cost of the upgrades of the apps to vista is ridiculous. Any guidence would be very much appreciated and i will keep you updated on my progress if you want.
thanks
zsuiter