1. In a computing environment, a method of performing hardware based transactions, the method comprising: at a hardware thread on a processor beginning a hardware based transaction for the thread; without committing or aborting the transaction, suspending the hardware based transaction and performing one or more operations for the thread, non-transactionally and not affected by: transaction monitoring for the transaction, an abort for the transaction, or a commit for the transaction; after performing one or more operations for the thread, non-transactionally, resuming the transaction and performing additional operations transactionally; and after performing the additional operations, either committing or aborting the transaction.