In-app browser Cloudflare Turnstile GPU crash leaves Windows Codex app unlaunchable

Bug report: In-app browser Cloudflare Turnstile GPU crash leaves Windows Codex app unlaunchable

Codex version

Codex Windows app 26.609.3341.0

Platform

• Windows 11 Home, version 10.0.26200, x64
• Intel Arc Graphics driver 32.0.101.6790 (2025-04-28)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU driver 32.0.15.6614 (2024-11-06)
• Microsoft Store package: OpenAI.Codex_26.609.3341.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0

Issue

Opening a page protected by Cloudflare Turnstile through the Codex in-app browser causes the embedded Chromium GPU process to crash. Afterward, the Codex desktop app can become permanently unlaunchable until it is reinstalled/repaired.

This happened repeatedly when opening:

https://info.nu.edu/dr/believe-succeed-scholarship/

The page redirects to a Cloudflare challenge URL. The problem appears to be related to Cloudflare Turnstile WebGL rendering, not the site's application content.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open Codex Windows app.
2. In a conversation, use the in-app Browser tool.
3. Navigate the browser to https://info.nu.edu/dr/believe-succeed-scholarship/.
4. The site redirects to a Cloudflare Turnstile challenge.
5. The Chromium GPU child process crashes.
6. Codex closes or becomes unusable.
7. After closing Codex, launching it again may create processes without a usable UI.
8. Reinstalling/repairing the Microsoft Store package restores Codex.

Expected behavior

A GPU/WebGL failure in an in-app browser tab should be isolated and recoverable. It should not make the entire Codex desktop app unlaunchable or require reinstalling the Store package.

Actual behavior

The GPU process crashes and subsequently fails to relaunch:

warning Recoverable Chromium child process gone exitCode=101457950 processType=GPU reason=crashed serviceName=GPU
WebGL: CONTEXT_LOST_WEBGL: loseContext: context lost
warning Recoverable Chromium child process gone exitCode=18 processType=GPU reason=launch-failed serviceName=GPU

The WebGL errors originate from a Cloudflare Turnstile challenge:

sourceId=https://challenges.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/challenge-platform/...

Windows/AppX observations

• Microsoft Defender had no Codex-related threat or quarantine records.
• No Codex crash was recorded in the standard Application Error log.
• After the failure, reinstall/repair generated repeated AppX events stating:

Trying to repair ACLs for ...\WindowsApps\OpenAI.Codex_26.609.3341.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0
ACLs repaired successfully

• AppModel Runtime later reported:

AppModel Runtime status ... successfully updated to 0x0 (previous status = 0x2)

• AppX deployment also warned that files under C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Deleted failed to be deleted.
• The current Store package status is Ok, and the bundled Codex CLI signature verifies as OpenAI.

Additional context

There is a possibly related Windows GUI launch issue: https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/25575

This report is different because the failure has a repeatable trigger and logs showing an embedded Chromium GPU/WebGL crash immediately before the app becomes unusable.

The full original logs may contain conversation identifiers and Cloudflare challenge tokens, so only the relevant redacted excerpts are included here.