Windows: granting write access to a directory on a non-system drive breaks exec in projectless tasks
Open 💬 2 comments Opened Aug 24, 2026 by peanutsmighty-source
💡 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)?
26.818.41509
What subscription do you have?
plus
What platform is your computer?
Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0 x64
What issue are you seeing?
Summary
On Windows, in a projectless Codex Desktop task, granting write access to a directory on a non-system drive can cause every subsequent exec command to fail before the process starts.
The failure happens even for Get-Date, before any filesystem write is attempted.
Actual result
The command fails before startup:
CreateProcess { message: "Rejected(\"Failed to create unified exec process: helper_unknown_error: setup refresh had errors\")" }
### What steps can reproduce the bug?
## Reproduction
1. Create a new task without selecting a project.
2. Confirm `Get-Date` succeeds.
3. Approve write access to an existing directory on a non-system drive, outside the task workspace (for example, `E:\some-directory`).
4. Do not perform any write.
5. Run `Get-Date`.
### What is the expected behavior?
exec success
### Additional information
_No response_
2 Comments
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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I reviewed #40215, #40044, #39841, #39697, and #38898.
They share the final
setup refresh had errorssymptom, but this report has a different and reproducible trigger:Get-Dateworking.Get-Dateto fail before process creation.So this appears to be a permission-refresh regression in the projectless-task path, rather than a general failure to start the command runner.
Keeping this issue open because the permission-transition reproduction and the projectless-vs-project control are not covered by the linked reports.