A virtualization system is described herein that facilitates communication between a virtualized application and a host operating system to allow the application to correctly access resources referenced by the application. When the operating system creates a virtualized application process, the virtualization system annotates a data structure associated with the process with an identifier that identifies the virtualized application environment associated with the process. When operating system components make requests on behalf of the originating virtual process, a virtualization driver checks the data structure associated with the process to determine that the helper process is doing work on behalf of the virtualized application process. Upon discovering that the thread is doing virtual process work, the virtualization driver directs the helper process's thread to the virtual application's resources, allowing the helper process to accomplish the requested work with the correct data.