In an emulated computing environment, a method is provided for logically decoupling the host operating system from the processor of the computer system with respect to certain processor settings of the processor. A hypervisor of the emulation program replaces some of the processor settings of the processor with processor settings associated with software routines or data structures provided by the guest operating system. The replaced processor settings are written to memory. During this period, when the processor calls a software routine or accesses a data structure associated with the replaced processor setting, the processor will call or access a software routine or access a data structure associated with the guest operating system, bypassing the host operating system and communicating directly with the guest operating system. When the host operating system is to be recoupled to the processor, the processor settings that have been saved to memory are rewritten to the appropriate registers of the processor. During the period that the hypervisor is coupled to the processor, the page table of the hypervisor is established such that it largely mirrors the page table of the guest operating system. If a change to the page table of the guest operating system causes a conflict between the page table of the guest operating system and the page table of the hypervisor, the page table of the hypervisor is reallocated in a manner that is transparent to the guest operating system.