All my projects and conversations are missing after Computer restart

Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

• #19290
• #19381
• #19345

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I'm getting this problem too, its extremely frustrating.

I was able to recover from this locally and wanted to add the concrete workaround/root cause I found.

BTW, Codex with 5.5 on extra high FIXED THIS PROBLEM. So it literally fixed itself lol

This did not appear to be data loss. The threads still existed in the local Codex database (%USERPROFILE%\.codex\state_5.sqlite) and session files. The missing sidebar/projects were caused by the desktop app's global UI/project state being rewritten without saved workspace roots.

On the affected Windows machine, %USERPROFILE%\.codex\.codex-global-state.json had been reduced to only the current projectless thread state, for example it was missing keys like:

• electron-saved-workspace-roots
• active-workspace-roots
• most entries under thread-workspace-root-hints

Older temp global-state files under %USERPROFILE%\.codex\ still contained the prior workspace root, and state_5.sqlite still contained the older thread rows. Restoring those keys brought the sidebar/projects back.

Important detail: editing .codex-global-state.json while Codex Desktop was still running did not stick. The running app had the empty sidebar/project state in memory and overwrote the restored file again on shutdown/relaunch.

The recovery that worked was:

1. Back up %USERPROFILE%\.codex\.codex-global-state.json and %USERPROFILE%\.codex\state_5.sqlite.
2. Fully quit Codex Desktop, including all background Codex.exe / codex.exe processes. Closing the window was not enough in this case.
3. While Codex was fully stopped, restore the missing global state keys:

• electron-saved-workspace-roots: array of the local workspace root(s)
• active-workspace-roots: same workspace root(s)
• thread-workspace-root-hints: map existing thread IDs from state_5.sqlite back to their workspace roots

1. Relaunch Codex Desktop.

After doing the restore post-exit, the projects and conversations reappeared in the left sidebar.

Suggested product-side fixes:

• Treat missing/empty electron-saved-workspace-roots / active-workspace-roots as recoverable if state_5.sqlite still has local threads with cwd values.
• On startup, rebuild workspace roots and thread-workspace-root-hints from the local thread DB/session index when the global state file is missing, truncated, or inconsistent.
• Avoid overwriting a repaired .codex-global-state.json from stale in-memory empty state during shutdown.
• Consider preserving the last known good global-state file before writing a reset/empty one.

This looks like a sidebar/project index corruption issue, not deletion of conversations.

This happened to me and I realized what happened. Very simple fix in my case. I had defined CODE_HOME in the environment variables to point to a new folder, but unknown to me the change wasn't picked up right away. I may or may not have opened Codex one before making the change, but I had not restarted my computer. So Codex saved all of its data into the default location, then switched to the one I had set after my computer restarted.

After I deleted CODEX_HOME and rebooted again, all of my chats/data was back.

I am experiencing the same or a closely related issue on Codex Desktop for Windows.

During the last week of July 2026, multiple previously visible and pinned Codex projects and their project history suddenly disappeared from the interface.

I did not intentionally delete, archive, unpin, or move these projects to another account or workspace.

The missing projects contained ongoing development work, project instructions, implementation history, technical decisions, previous task context, and completed Codex work. Their disappearance forced me to reconstruct project context and repeat previously completed Codex tasks.

I submitted diagnostic feedback through the Codex Desktop app.

Feedback ID:

019fb27c-bcc3-7243-970b-7655ccad1da4

Please associate the diagnostic data attached to this Feedback ID with this issue and investigate:

1. Whether any user-initiated deletion, archive, unpin, or workspace transfer event exists.
2. Whether the missing projects and sessions still exist in local or server-side records.
3. Whether the project/sidebar index or project-to-session associations can be restored.
4. Whether this issue resulted from synchronization, indexing, migration, or a Windows desktop client problem.
5. Whether similar incidents occurred during the same period.

The disappearance caused me to repeat previously completed work and consume additional Codex usage, credits, tokens, and plan limits. I will submit the account-specific usage compensation request privately through OpenAI Support.

I am not posting my account email, private project names, repository details, or other confidential account information publicly.