VS Code Extension pre-release broken on windows, infinite loading

Resolved 💬 8 comments Opened Nov 4, 2025 by mommysgoodpuppy Closed Nov 16, 2025

💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What version of the VS Code extension are you using?

v0.5.36 (pre-release)

What subscription do you have?

Plus

Which IDE are you using?

VS Code

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.22631.0 x64

What issue are you seeing?

After installing pre-release and enabling agent mode (restart with wsl)

[error] Codex app-server process exited with code 4294967295 and signal null

vscode output channel for codex
<img width="659" height="341" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/afd86718-d612-4b27-a012-6a00cba5bb58" />

What steps can reproduce the bug?

install pre-release
turn on full agent mode(restart with wsl)
view codex window and codex output channel

switching to release version and reloading vscode remedies the issue for now

What is the expected behavior?

works like release ver

Additional information

vscode ver 1.105.1

wsl:
lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS
Release: 22.04
Codename: jammy

View original on GitHub ↗

8 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 8 months ago

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

#6062
#4982

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dylan-hurd-oai contributor · 8 months ago

What is the output of: wsl -l -v?

mommysgoodpuppy · 8 months ago

What is the output of: wsl -l -v?

wsl -l -v
  NAME              STATE           VERSION
* Ubuntu-22.04      Stopped         2
  docker-desktop    Stopped         2

VorlonCD · 8 months ago

Same issue....

Windows 11 24H2 build 26100.7019.
VS Code Codex extension: 0.4.38 (stable, not pre-release)
WSL: Ubuntu 24.04.1 (WSL updated, Ubuntu app updated and restarted)
codex inside WSL: v0.57.0, codex CLI works fine when run manually
VS Code Codex log shows the same exact error as above.
The error looks like its not expecting utf-16 in the json it returns.
Only happens when I force the codex setting in VSCode to use WSL and enable Agent mode.
When I launch the local version of codex from here it gives me "v0.56.0-alpha.5", which is where I suspect the issue is, not in the WSL version.
C:\Users\Username\.vscode\extensions\openai.chatgpt-0.4.38-win32-x64\bin\windows-x86_64\codex.exe

dylan-hurd-oai contributor · 8 months ago

This should be fixed in 0.5.39 - let us know if you're still seeing issues

lrq3000 · 8 months ago

Seems like I am unlucky but I just installed the Codex extension and once I updated my wsl to be able to install the latest ubuntu, Codex started crashing on launch. I keep the infinite loading bug on both the release and pre-release channels, including with v0.5.39.

/EDIT: If I disable "Run Codex In Windows Subsystem for Linux" in the extention's settings, then the extension loads fine again.

lrq3000 · 8 months ago

Sorry my mistake, it seems to work now, I was just too expeditive, what happened is that wsl was asking me to create a root account and I did not finish the process before trying Codex, so Codex was stuck trying to call a wsl env but failed because the env was stuck.

So for those who run into this issue in the future, it may be worth checking whether the wsl env is fully available.

dylan-hurd-oai contributor · 8 months ago

@lrq3000 super helpful feedback! Can you open up a new issue for the root account problem, so we can track fixing it? I'd like to close this current issue.