Need help

I'll just start off with saying that I am a noob when it comes to computers, I only know enough to get me around, but I recently bought a Asus laptop with Vista pre-installed and once I realized that some programs wouldn't work with Vista I decided I wanted to try and dual boot with XP but I only have the recovery disk and am wondering if I can get around needing the Install disk. I noticed a few people had/have the same problem but I didn't see and responses or solutions given.. I have two drives ( C: & D: ) Vista being on the C: drive. Thanks in advance