019f5bce-c614-7a13-bd5e-df95283e3130

Open 💬 2 comments Opened Aug 5, 2026 by dunstonchris

💡 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)?

What subscription do you have?

business

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0 x64

What issue are you seeing?

Codex browser control cannot initialize on Windows. The Node-backed browser-control kernel exits before connecting to Google Chrome.

Full error:

node_repl kernel exited unexpectedly

node_repl diagnostics:{"kernel_status":"exited(code=1)","kernel_stderr_tail":"windows sandbox failed: helper_unknown_error: apply deny-read ACLs","reason":"stdout_eof","stream_error"}

This prevents Codex from controlling any authenticated Chrome page. The failure occurs before the target website is inspected or changed.

Task/session ID:019f5bce-c614-7a13-bd5e-df95283e3130

No token-limit or context-window error was displayed.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Feedback ID: 019f5bce-c614-7a13-bd5e-df95283e3130

What is the expected behavior?

The browser-control runtime should initialize successfully, connect to the installed and enabled ChatGPT Chrome extension, and allow Codex to list or claim the open Chrome tabs.

Codex should then be able to inspect and interact with the selected website according to the user’s permissions.

The Windows sandbox should not fail while applying its read-access restrictions.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

The installed read-only Chrome diagnostics all passed:

Google Chrome is installed and running.

The ChatGPT Chrome extension is installed and enabled.

The selected Chrome profile contains the extension.

The Chrome native-messaging manifest exists.

The native-host name is correct.

The Windows registry path matches the manifest path.

The expected Chrome-extension origin is allowed.

Opening a fresh Chrome window through the bundled diagnostic script succeeds.

The extension and native-host diagnostic scripts return exit code 0.

The failure appears to happen while initializing the Windows sandbox, before browser-extension communication begins.

The same error occurred in more than one Codex task, so it does not appear to be specific to one conversation or website. No target-site changes were made because the browser runtime never connected.

Additional information

_No response_

View original on GitHub ↗

2 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 22 days ago

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

#37131
#36087

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gabrielmendespro17-png · 21 days ago

Additional confirmed reproduction and recovery after a Windows machine restart:

Codex Desktop AppX version: 26.730.8199.0.
The Node-backed browser-control kernel and normal sandboxed operations failed before process creation with windows sandbox failed: helper_unknown_error: apply deny-read ACLs.
.codex/.sandbox/deny_read_acl_state.json was exactly 22 bytes and every byte was 0x00.
.codex/.sandbox/setup_error.json contained {"code":"helper_unknown_error","message":"apply deny-read ACLs"}.
The corrupt files were preserved under backup names. The next benign sandbox operation regenerated a valid state containing {"principals":{}}.
Immediately afterward, normal sandbox commands worked and the Chrome browser-control runtime initialized successfully and listed an open Chrome tab.
Chrome itself was running and the ChatGPT extension was installed/enabled. The native-host manifest and its HKCU NativeMessagingHosts registration were still missing, so the supported remove/re-add Chrome plugin flow remains necessary for persistent recovery.

This strongly matches the corrupt 22-NUL state-file failure described in #35718 and #34841. Please consider quarantining malformed state and regenerating it automatically, and writing the state atomically so a restart cannot leave a persistent sandbox outage.