Windows Codex Desktop: @Computer never exposes native Computer Use tools even after Repair and full reinstall

What issue are you seeing?

On Windows Codex Desktop, typing @Computer never exposes the native Computer Use tool in the active thread.

From the user side, Computer Use appears enabled in settings, but the actual model-facing desktop control tools are missing. The available tools in-session remain ordinary tools/connectors only (for example Codex app/thread tools, GitHub, Gmail, Photoshop), with no native Windows observe/click/type tools.

This persisted after:

• normal restarts
• Windows "Repair" for the app
• full uninstall + reinstall

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Install Codex Desktop from Microsoft Store on Windows.
2. Open Codex and enable Computer Use.
3. Start a new thread.
4. Type:

@Computer view the current desktop window

1. Check the actual tool list / tool discovery results.

What happened?

@Computer does not expose native Computer Use tools.

Observed symptoms:

• no native Computer Use / Node REPL / desktop-control tools appear in the active session
• tool_search still shows only ordinary app/connectors
• codex_apps_tools / codex_app_directory cache files do not contain:
• computer-use
• openai-bundled
• node_repl
• browser
• chrome
• Codex Desktop tray icon sometimes appeared blank during this debugging cycle
• Computer Use settings previously showed mojibake / garbled entries in the always-allowed apps list
• earlier in the same failure cycle, Windows also showed a codex-windows-sandbox-setup.exe module-not-found dialog

What did you expect to happen?

After typing @Computer, the active thread should expose the model-facing Computer Use tools so Codex can actually observe and control Windows apps.

Environment

• OS: Windows 11 x64
• Codex Desktop package: OpenAI.Codex_26.616.6631.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0
• Install path:

C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\OpenAI.Codex_26.616.6631.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0

• Time observed: 2026-06-22

Key evidence

The local cua_node runtime exists and includes the expected executables:

• node.exe
• node_repl.exe
• codex-computer-use.exe

But the current session still does not receive Computer Use tools.

During debugging, local app logs also showed repeated bundled runtime / bundled marketplace failures from the Windows Store package path, including:

• bundled_executable_relocation_failed
• browser_use_setup_failed ... reason=node-repl-missing
• computer-use native pipe helper paths unavailable
• plugin_marketplace_folder_write_failed
• bundled_plugins_marketplace_resolve_failed

A manual PowerShell copy test from WindowsApps to user-writable directories reproduced the same class of failure with:

The specified file could not be encrypted.

Affected examples included:

• bundled computer-use plugin manifest copy
• bundled cua_node files such as CHANGELOG.md

Additional notes

Windows "Repair" did change one thing: C:\Users\fccvs\.codex\computer-use\config.json became writable again and Codex was able to update it.

However, even after Repair and then a full uninstall/reinstall, the core problem remained unchanged:

• no computer-use in session tool discovery
• no openai-bundled entries in generated app/tool cache
• @Computer still unusable in practice

This may be related to existing Windows bundled-plugin / Computer Use registration issues, but this report adds a case where both Repair and full reinstall still do not recover the model-facing Computer Use tool exposure.