Codex Windows app crashes on startup with non-ASCII Windows user path

Codex Windows app crashes on startup with non-ASCII Windows user path

Summary

After updating Codex on Windows, the Codex desktop app opens a blank white window briefly and then exits. This appears to be a regression in the Windows desktop app runtime staging/copy path when the Windows user profile path contains non-ASCII characters.

Environment

• OS: Windows, native Codex desktop app
• User profile path contains Korean characters: C:\Users\<Korean_name>_Jea
• Codex desktop package: OpenAI.Codex_26.609.3341.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0
• Codex app version seen in config/runtime logs: 26.609.30741
• Codex CLI: codex-cli 0.139.0
• Node runtime in app bundle: v24.14.0

Symptoms

1. Launching Codex from the normal Windows app shortcut starts the app.
2. A blank white window appears briefly.
3. The app exits after about 2-3 seconds.
4. A new Crashpad dump is created on each launch under:

AppData\Local\Packages\OpenAI.Codex_2p2nqsd0c76g0\LocalCache\Roaming\Codex\web\Codex\Crashpad\reports

1. The app log only contains startup lines and then stops:

• Launching app ... platform=win32
• Appshot hotkey inactive configured=true enabled=true platform=win32

Crash evidence

Strings extracted from the generated .dmp files include:

• node:internal/fs/cp/cp
• .staging-789504f803e82e2b-*
• copy_directory
• rename_staging
• cua_node
• __char_to_wide
• Paths under C:\Users\<Korean_name>_Jea\AppData\Local\OpenAI\Codex\runtimes\cua_node\.staging-*
• Source path:

C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\OpenAI.Codex_26.609.3341.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0\app\resources\cua_node

This suggests the app is crashing while copying/staging the bundled cua_node runtime into the user's LOCALAPPDATA path.

Local observations

Before repair, this directory contained only stale staging directories and no complete runtime:

C:\Users\<Korean_name>_Jea\AppData\Local\OpenAI\Codex\runtimes\cua_node

The expected complete runtime structure is:

• manifest.json
• bin\node.exe
• bin\node_repl.exe
• bin\node_modules

Copying the bundled runtime manually into the local runtime path made node.exe --version work, but launching the normal app still produced a new .staging-* directory and crashed again.

Workaround that succeeds

Launching Codex.exe with LOCALAPPDATA set to an ASCII-only directory avoids the crash:

$env:LOCALAPPDATA = "C:\Users\Public\Documents\ESTsoft\CreatorTemp\CodexLocalAppData"
Start-Process -FilePath "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\OpenAI.Codex_26.609.3341.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0\app\Codex.exe" -WorkingDirectory "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\OpenAI.Codex_26.609.3341.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0\app"

With this workaround:

• The Codex desktop process remains running.
• The local runtime is installed under the ASCII-only LOCALAPPDATA.
• No new Crashpad dump is created in the original package Crashpad directory.

Expected behavior

The Windows desktop app should start normally when the Windows user profile path contains non-ASCII characters, and runtime staging/copy should correctly handle Unicode paths.

Actual behavior

The app crashes during startup while staging/copying cua_node into LOCALAPPDATA when that path includes Korean characters.

Additional note

The Windows sandbox setting was also changed locally from:

[windows]
sandbox = "elevated"

to:

[windows]
sandbox = "unelevated"

because elevated command execution showed CreateProcessWithLogonW failed: 1056 in this environment after the Windows/Codex update. This appears separate from the desktop white-screen crash, but may be related to the same Windows update window.