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Codex Issues / #39484

Codex CLI on Windows hangs for minutes when executing PowerShell/shell commands

Open 💬 2 comments Opened Aug 19, 2026 by ufrancesca06-eng
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What version of Codex CLI is running?

0.145.0 (also reproduced on 0.144.6)

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Plus with additional purchased credits

Which model were you using?

gpt-5.5 medium

What platform is your computer?

Windows 10 x64

What terminal emulator and version are you using (if applicable)?

Windows Terminal with PowerShell

Codex doctor report

not available

What issue are you seeing?

Codex CLI becomes extremely slow when executing shell/PowerShell commands on Windows.

Normal text-only responses are immediate, but simple commands such as Get-Content and Get-ChildItem remain in "Working" for 30–50+ seconds and sometimes several minutes.

One occurrence remained at "Working (7m 03s)" before I interrupted it.

The exact same Get-Content command executes immediately when run directly in Windows PowerShell outside Codex CLI.

Restarting the PC did not resolve the issue.

The issue reproduced on both Codex CLI 0.145.0 and 0.144.6.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Uploaded thread: 01a01a0e-be08-7bd3-b6cf-31801fe9d0d4

What is the expected behavior?

Expected behavior

Simple shell/PowerShell commands executed through Codex CLI should start and complete without the 30–50+ second or multi-minute delay.

Since the same commands complete immediately in Windows PowerShell, Codex CLI should execute them with comparable responsiveness.

Additional information

_No response_

View original on GitHub ↗

2 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 8 days ago

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

  • #38665

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ufrancesca06-eng · 8 days ago

Additional finding:

After changing:

[windows]
sandbox = "unelevated"

the long 20–40+ second hang disappeared, but sandboxed execution immediately failed with:

windows sandbox: SetTokenInformation(TokenDefaultDacl) failed: 1344

Codex then retried through the approval path and the same Get-ChildItem command completed successfully.

Direct PowerShell execution of the command takes about 13 ms.

Earlier investigation also showed a very large number of DENY ACE entries for unresolved SIDs on a Codex-flagged directory.

This appears related to Windows sandbox token/default-DACL construction rather than shell command execution itself.