Codex Desktop Windows silent exit with memory growth and no WER dump

Environment

• Product: Codex Desktop from Microsoft Store
• Package: OpenAI.Codex_26.601.2237.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0
• Version: 26.601.2237.0
• AppID: OpenAI.Codex_2p2nqsd0c76g0!App
• OS: Windows, current-user MSIX/AppX install
• Codex CLI state/skills are preserved and continue to work; the issue is isolated to Desktop.

Summary

Codex Desktop repeatedly exits silently on Windows. I do not see a normal Application Error, Windows Error Reporting crash dump, or Codex WER report. The main Codex.exe process remains Responding=True shortly before exit, but memory grows significantly before the whole Desktop process group exits.

Observed behavior

The app launches and can run for some time. During normal Desktop use, the Desktop process group exits together. On relaunch, the same pattern repeats. The CLI and shared .codex skills/config are not removed or corrupted.

Key local evidence

A local process monitor captured grouped exits and pre-exit memory state.

Recent silent exit:

• Time: 2026-06-04 21:11:14 local time
• Main GUI process: Codex.exe, PID 93852
• Path: ...\WindowsApps\OpenAI.Codex_26.601.2237.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0\app\Codex.exe
• State before exit: Responding=True
• Memory before exit: about 2998 MB working set, about 4512.5 MB private memory
• WER LocalDumps folder: no dump created
• Windows events around failure: mostly AppModel/Python AppX activation noise, not a Codex Application Error/WER crash

Earlier post-reinstall silent exit showed the same pattern:

• Time: 2026-06-04 12:55:17 local time
• Main visible Codex.exe was Responding=True
• Memory before exit: about 2432 MB working set, about 2369 MB private memory
• No WER dump/report

What I already tried

• Enabled WER LocalDumps for Codex.exe and related child processes.
• Clean reset of the Electron/MSIX package-local profile.
• Disabled broken local plugins and lowered default reasoning effort.
• Full current-user AppX/MSIX uninstall and reinstall from official MS Store package 9PLM9XGG6VKS.
• Disabled Windows notifications for OpenAI.Codex_2p2nqsd0c76g0!App (Enabled=0) as a workaround suggested in a related Windows notification issue.
• Added an external process monitor to capture process exits and pre-exit dumps.

The crash still reproduces after all of the above.

Pre-exit dumps

Because WER did not capture anything, I added a separate memory-threshold monitor using Windows comsvcs.dll MiniDump. It captured full dumps from a later run where the GUI process exceeded ~1.8-1.9 GB before exit. The dump files are local and large (~2 GB each), so I am not attaching them publicly. I can provide them through a private/support upload path if useful.

Local dump filenames are of the form:

• codex-preexit-20260604-211952-pid62116-gui-1922mb-attempt1.dmp
• codex-preexit-20260604-211957-pid62116-gui-1896mb-attempt2.dmp
• codex-preexit-20260604-212000-pid62116-gui-1890mb-attempt3.dmp

Expected behavior

Codex Desktop should remain open during normal use. If it crashes, it should produce a usable error/dump/report instead of silently exiting the whole process group.

Actual behavior

The Desktop process group exits silently after the main Codex.exe process grows to multiple GB of private memory, and Windows does not produce a standard crash report/dump.