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Codex Issues / #30924

Windows Desktop: failed to resolve rollout path / Error submitting message on every new conversation

Open 💬 4 comments Opened Jul 2, 2026 by yaqianxiao
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

OS: Windows 10 Pro 22H2 (Build 19045.6466) Codex Desktop Installer (latest) Codex CLI 0.142.5 Also tested Microsoft Store version with the same result.

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Plus

What platform is your computer?

Windows 10 Pro 22H2 x64 Build 19045.6466

What issue are you seeing?

Every new conversation fails immediately.

Desktop launches normally, but every message returns:

  • Error submitting message

Sometimes it also shows:

  • Codex app-server is not available

and

failed to resolve rollout path

C:\Users\<username>\.codex\sessions\2026\07\02\rollout-xxxxxxxx.jsonl

file does not exist

The CLI works normally.

The issue only occurs in the Desktop application.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

  1. Install Codex Desktop on Windows.
  2. Launch the Desktop application.
  3. Create a new conversation.
  4. Type any message.
  5. Click Send.

Every conversation fails immediately.

What is the expected behavior?

The Desktop app should create the rollout/session file and submit the message successfully.

Instead it immediately reports:

Error submitting message

and sometimes

failed to resolve rollout path

Additional information

Already verified:

  • Reinstalled Desktop Installer
  • Previously tested Microsoft Store version
  • Same issue with both versions
  • Codex CLI works normally
  • Authentication works
  • codex app launches Desktop successfully

Windows:

Windows 10 Pro 22H2
Build 19045.6466

Verified:

  • .codex is writable
  • I can manually create

C:\Users\<username>\.codex\sessions\2026\07\02

and create jsonl files.

Desktop never creates rollout-xxxxxxxx.jsonl automatically.

Desktop attempts to resolve a rollout file that does not exist.

CODEX_HOME is empty.

HOME is empty.

USERPROFILE is correctly set.

This appears to be specific to the Desktop app.

The Desktop app never creates the rollout jsonl file before trying to resolve it.

It appears the rollout/session initialization fails before the first message is submitted.

View original on GitHub ↗

4 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 1 month ago

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

  • #30748
  • #29632

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yaqianxiao · 1 month ago

Additional investigation:

  • The Desktop app never creates .codex/sessions/.../rollout-xxxx.jsonl.
  • I manually created:

C:\Users\<username>\.codex\sessions\2026\07\02\
and confirmed Windows permissions are correct.

  • I can manually create jsonl files in that directory.
  • However, the Desktop app still immediately reports:

failed to resolve rollout path
...rollout-xxxx.jsonl
file does not exist

This suggests the Desktop app is attempting to resolve a rollout file that it never creates.
CLI continues to work normally.

NichUK · 1 month ago

Sometimes I'm using the Codex Windows app perfectly normally, and then it'll stop, waiting for me to respond to something, but when I do, it'll say: Error submitting message.
Any message I then send in that chat conversation will get the same error until I restart the app.

shleder · 6 days ago

The "failed to resolve rollout path" on Windows is almost always a path-identity divergence — the same session referenced as C:\... in one layer and \\?\C:\... (extended-length prefix) in another, so the resolver treats them as different files and the lookup fails even though the rollout exists on disk.

The way to confirm it is to compare how the rollout path is stored across the thread-store, the session_index, and the actual filesystem, and check for the \\?\ prefix mismatch or drive-letter casing differences. If the path forms diverge, that's the root cause, not a missing file.

Full disclosure: I maintain codex-rescue (https://github.com/shleder/codex-rescue). codex-rescue workspace --latest verifies saved working-directory and rollout path portability across POSIX / Windows / WSL and specifically detects C:\ vs \\?\C:\ identity divergence read-only. It'll tell you whether your "failed to resolve" is a path-form mismatch (recoverable) vs a genuinely missing rollout. Alpha7 hardened the Windows extended-path normalization for exactly this class of bug.