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Windows Codex app causes mouse stutter during startup and task switching without CPU/Disk saturation #33074
Description
Summary
On Windows 11, launching the Codex desktop app and switching/opening tasks causes visible system mouse stutter. The issue persists after a clean Windows 11 reinstall and after multiple local mitigations. It is severe enough to affect normal PC operation during Codex startup.
Environment
- OS: Windows 11, clean reinstall
- Codex package:
OpenAI.Codex_26.707.9981.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0 - Codex version:
26.707.9981.0 - WebView2 Runtime:
150.0.4078.65 - GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti
- NVIDIA driver:
32.0.16.1074, driver date2026-07-02 - Mouse: wired HID mouse, SteelSeries device
HID\VID_1038&PID_1361&MI_00&COL01
Symptoms
- Mouse stutters during Codex startup, originally for roughly 30 seconds.
- Mouse also stutters when opening/switching Codex tasks, especially tasks that have not been opened recently.
- The behavior occurs only after starting Codex/projects; normal system use before opening Codex does not show the same stutter.
- Reinstalling Windows 11 did not resolve the issue.
Reproduction
- Close Codex completely.
- Start Codex desktop app.
- Observe mouse movement during startup and while the task list/task UI loads.
- Open or switch to a Codex task.
- Observe additional mouse stutter.
Diagnostics already performed
The following tests did not resolve the issue:
- Clean Windows 11 reinstall.
- Closing ToDesk.
- Closing QQ Music and SteelSeries background apps.
- Moving the wired mouse to another rear USB port.
- Lowering SteelSeries mouse polling rate from 800Hz to 125Hz.
- Disabling
Todesk Virtual Display Adapterand retesting, then re-enabling it. - Windows app Repair for Codex.
- GPU preference changes: power saving vs high performance.
- Disabling Windows windowed game optimizations.
- Launching with GPU rendering disabled.
- Deleting WebView/Chromium shader caches (
GrShaderCache,ShaderCache,GPUPersistentCache).
Local profile/cache observations
Moving the Codex WebView profile temporarily improved the issue, but the stutter returned after Codex regenerated the local profile/cache.
Observed profile sizes:
- New profile shortly after reset: ~65 MB
- New profile after Codex startup/use: ~121 MB
- Old profile backup: ~131 MB
The growth was mainly in Chromium/WebView component/cache directories such as:
component_crx_cacheWasmTtsEngineWidevineCdmDefaultGrShaderCache
This suggests clearing local profile/cache is only a temporary mitigation.
WPR/WPA/xperf evidence
A Windows Performance Recorder trace was captured during a reproduced stutter:
- Trace duration: 169 seconds
- Events: ~27.5 million
- Lost events: 0
- ETL size: ~2.72 GB
The trace is available if maintainers want it, but I am not attaching it publicly because ETL traces can include local paths/process metadata.
High-level analysis with WPA/xperf:
- No sustained CPU, disk, or memory saturation.
- During the 70s-100s peak window, the system still had ~75% Idle CPU.
- During the 120s-125s UI-delay window, the system still had ~78% Idle CPU.
- Main contributors in the peak windows included
ChatGPT.exe,codex.exe,dwm.exe, and WebView-related activity, but none saturated the system. uidelaycaptured a foregroundChatGPT.exemessage-check delay of 218 ms onChrome_RenderWidgetHostHWND/Chrome_WidgetWin_1.- DPC/ISR activity showed USB/NVIDIA/DirectX-related modules active, but no single driver-level stall clearly explains a 30-second user-visible stutter.
Codex logs
Codex desktop logs during startup/task use showed repeated frontend/UI related messages, including many occurrences of:
ResizeObserver loop completed with undelivered notifications.
Startup logs also showed relatively slow initialization calls in some runs, for example:
plugin/list durationMs=1898
plugin/list durationMs=4393
There were also repeated browser/sidebar lifecycle warnings around task/window ownership, but no clear system-level crash or display driver reset was found in Windows Event Viewer.
Expected behavior
Starting Codex and switching tasks should not cause system-level mouse stutter when CPU, disk, and memory are not saturated.
Actual behavior
Codex startup/task switching causes visible mouse stutter even on a clean Windows 11 install, and the issue returns after local profile/cache regeneration.
Notes
This appears more consistent with Codex desktop frontend/WebView rendering or initialization behavior than with a general Windows, USB port, mouse polling rate, GPU preference, or old local profile issue.
Activity
github-actions commentedon Jul 14, 2026
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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Neontetra8492AI commentedon Jul 19, 2026
This is an additional reproduction of the issue on Windows 10 with a newer Codex Desktop build. It appears closely related to #33074.
Environment:
OpenAI.Codex_26.715.4045.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g026.715.4045.0150.0.7871.12419045.6466, x6432.0.16.10746.4.13-40.144.4(not used for this desktop reproduction)Reproduction:
ChatGPT.exeandcodex.exeprocesses have exited.I initially suspected the Wacom driver, but the following tests did not reliably eliminate the symptom:
The repeatable correlation is Codex Desktop running versus fully exited. This appears to be an actual mouse/input stall during FPS gameplay, not only a cosmetic cursor flicker.
Expected behavior:
Launching or using Codex Desktop should not cause system-wide mouse input stuttering or affect FPS gameplay.
Could you investigate whether this is related to the Codex Desktop frontend, WebView/Chromium rendering, or Windows presentation/input handling?
Zoro8818 commentedon Jul 28, 2026
Additional observations from further testing:
I tested Codex briefly on another Windows PC used by my wife. That machine did not show the same mouse stutter during startup or basic task use. The test duration was short, but there was no behavior similar to the stutter seen on my main PC.
I also found other user reports online describing that after opening Codex, users may need to wait around 30-40 seconds before the app becomes normally usable.
On my main PC, mouse stutter can also occur while items under the Scheduled section are running, not only during initial app startup.
The same type of stutter still occurs when viewing other content, switching/opening tasks, and creating a new task.
This suggests the issue may not be caused by account data or one specific task alone. It may depend on Codex startup/task-state refresh/background task activity interacting with a specific hardware/driver/platform combination.
sens2115 commentedon Aug 6, 2026
I’m seeing the same issue on Windows.
Environment:
OpenAI.Codex_26.730.8199.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g026.730.8199.0Symptoms:
Things tested:
BelowNormal.Observed locally:
ChatGPT.exeprocesses are spawned by the Codex package.ChatGPT.exerenderer/main processes show CPU activity during the stutter, but there is no full system CPU saturation.This looks very similar to the startup/task-switching system mouse stutter described in this issue.
catchitin commentedon Aug 8, 2026
I can reproduce the same launch-only, system-wide mouse stutter on the current Windows Store build.
Environment
26.803.5235.0x6426200.897332.0.16.1074(610.74)Reproduction / duration
This reproduces on each reopen. The exact recovery point was not stopwatch-marked, but in the measured run the main process started at T+0 and the user was able to send the recovered-state observation by T+39.5 s, so that is an upper bound. This closely matches the roughly 30-second shape reported here.
Important separation from a different persistent-stutter bug
This machine also had an unrelated malformed heartbeat automation retry loop. Deleting that automation produced a strong A/B improvement and removed the persistent stutter/process churn, as documented in #33371. After that loop was removed, the launch-only transient described here still remained, so these appear to be two distinct paths.
Post-cleanup launch timeline from Codex desktop logs
Relative to desktop log start:
The only recorded main-thread jank in the first 120 seconds was at +4.239 s, 41–66 ms after the two auxiliary renderer/window creations began. The broader one-time initialization chain ends at about +15.5 s. There were zero startup errors in the first 15 seconds and no retry loop after cleanup.
Windows/process observations
codex.exeat +1.71 s.This does not yet prove which initializer causes the input hitch, but the strongest time correlation is the +4.2–8.5 s auxiliary renderer bootstrap; plugin/browser/runtime/thread initialization continues to +15.5 s and is the next candidate. HID topology watcher is loaded, but there were no HID/Micro discovery failures or fallback-scan logs to correlate it with this launch.
I can capture a startup WPR trace with CPU/GPU/DesktopComposition providers if maintainers want a trace from build 26.803.5235.0; I would prefer to share it privately because ETL files can contain local paths/process metadata.
catchitin commentedon Aug 8, 2026
Follow-up: cold task switching also reproduces the transient system-wide stutter on 26.803.5235.0
Correction to my previous update: the remaining transient is not strictly launch-only. On the same Windows system and current Store build (
26.803.5235.0), I also observe severe system mouse/UI stutter when opening a task that has not yet been opened in the current app session. Switching away and revisiting that same task produces a much smaller disturbance.This cold-versus-warm observation is qualitative. I did not instrument exact click-to-usable latency, so I am not claiming a numeric A/B duration.
Data-quality note
I am explicitly excluding one preliminary task-switch observation because it overlapped WPR trace merge/finalization work. That observation was recorder-contaminated; none of its timing or process attribution is used below.
All measurements below come exclusively from a separate, controlled task-switch capture.
Controlled cold-task trace
26.803.5235.0x6423:38:23.833–23:39:29.942Z23:38:35.001Z; the exact mouse-click time was not separately instrumented23–32(23:38:46.8–23:38:55.8Z) and had subsided by second33Peak sampled CPU time in one-second buckets:
ChatGPT.exemain processChatGPT.exerendererChatGPT.exeGPU processcodex.exeapp-serverdwm.exeValues above 1,000 ms are aggregate process CPU time across multiple threads, not single-core utilization percentages. Compared with trace seconds 33–42 (a conservative comparison window that includes a separate app-server spike at second 35), mean sampled CPU time was approximately 10.5x higher for the main process, 6.1x for the renderer, 10.6x for the GPU process, 5.1x for the app-server, and 5.2x for DWM.
Peak provider event counts in one-second buckets:
Microsoft-Windows-DxgKrnlMicrosoft-Windows-DirectCompositionMicrosoft-Windows-Win32kAcross the same 10-second burst, aggregate DPC+ISR duration was ~1.476 s. About 71% of that duration resolved to
nvlddmkm.sys/dxgkrnl.sys; the worst one-second bucket contained ~151.0 ms DPC plus ~75.9 ms ISR time. This aligns with the graphics/compositor burst, but it is not sustained DPC/ISR saturation and does not establish the NVIDIA driver as the root cause.The peaks are tightly clustered across the app-server, desktop main process, renderer, GPU/kernel graphics path, Win32k, and compositor during the cold task load. My current interpretation is that first-load task hydration/rendering triggers the workload and the graphics/composition path amplifies the visible input hitch. The trace does not yet distinguish whether hydration, renderer behavior, DirectComposition/DWM, or the GPU driver is the primary defect.
Cold-load process fanout
The same 10-second window contained 60 process starts; 54 had already stopped by the end of the window. This included 32 short-lived
gitprocesses. The only six still running at second 32 were three app-server child pairs ofnode_repl.exe+node.exe, created in three waves at approximately23:38:48.06Z,23:38:51.31Z, and23:38:54.28Z. Those waves align with the three app/renderer/compositor lobes in the trace. All six later stopped within the capture.This strengthens the first-load initialization interpretation, but the ETL process data alone cannot determine whether each pair belongs to thread, plugin, MCP, or workspace setup.
I am not attaching the raw ETL publicly because it can contain local paths, process command lines, and other machine/session metadata. I can provide it through a maintainer-designated secure/private channel, or provide additional sanitized exports publicly if useful.
VIEWVIEWVIEW commentedon Aug 13, 2026
I can reproduce a very similar symptom on the Windows Codex desktop app: after launch, the entire PC can become severely laggy for about 3 minutes. Left-clicks and general input are delayed system-wide, while the Codex CLI remains unaffected.
There is no obvious sustained disk I/O saturation during the episode. I checked the currently running PowerShell processes specifically because of #36025: I did not observe a stream of short-lived PowerShell children or repeated
Get-CimInstance Win32_Process/ performance-counter WMI queries. The PowerShell processes present were long-lived user automations plus a Codex command helper, rather than a restart loop.That makes this case look closer to the desktop UI/WebView/DWM-initialization or task-list/rendering path described here than to the WMI polling path. I can provide a reproducible startup trace or further process/GPU/UI-delay measurements if useful.
canglang888888 commentedon Aug 15, 2026
Additional reproduction on 26.810.4967.0: delayed-onset persistent stutter and main-process busy loop
I can reproduce this on a newer Windows Store build. This case extends the startup/cold-task reports here because the severe system-wide mouse drift/stutter appears after several hours of use and then persists while the app appears idle.
Environment
OpenAI.Codex_26.810.4967.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0ChatGPT.exeproduct/file version:151.0.7922.13726200.9168, x6432.0.15.6094Reproduction and A/B result
The problem reproduced with normal hardware acceleration and again when launching the signed Store executable directly with
--disable-gpu.For the disabled-GPU run, process command lines confirmed:
--disable-gpu;--disable-gpu-compositing;--use-angle=d3d11-warp-webgl(WARP software rendering);Despite that, the same mouse stutter returned after about five hours. Disabling GPU therefore did not resolve this case and added some WARP CPU work.
Process measurements
Immediately after the disabled-GPU restart:
ChatGPT.exe: working set ~385 MB, private memory ~291 MB, 69 threads;At the reproduced fault, across four ~5-second windows:
ChatGPT.exe: ~128-134% of one logical core continuously (about 4.56-4.80% whole-machine CPU on 28 logical processors);After all concurrent diagnostic sampling stopped, a separate 15-second quiet sample still showed:
This makes the sustained load unlikely to be caused only by active output/streaming or the diagnostic commands.
System-level checks during the fault
RADAR_PRE_LEAK_64forChatGPT.exe.The strongest correlation is a sustained Electron/Chromium main-process busy loop plus substantial private-memory growth after extended use, rather than GPU saturation, DPC/ISR pressure, paging, or the Codex app-server. This may overlap with #30021 and #20735.
I am not attaching raw desktop logs or ETL data publicly because they may contain local paths or session metadata. I can provide additional sanitized counters, or capture a short WPR CPU-stack trace for a maintainer-designated private channel if useful.
silentjsy commentedon Aug 15, 2026
Additional reproduction on Windows 10 with package 26.810.6296.0
I can reproduce the same system-wide mouse stutter on a newer Windows build. The regression started immediately after updating the desktop app. Fully exiting the ChatGPT/Codex desktop app makes the mouse and the rest of the desktop responsive again.
Environment
OpenAI.Codex_26.810.6296.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g026.810.50856, build66440.148.0-alpha.942.3.0151.0.7922.13726.803.10989.0Reproduction
Measurements during an affected active task
codex.exeat about 12.0-13.3% of total CPU on a 12-logical-processor system, equivalent to roughly 1.4-1.6 logical cores.ChatGPT.exeApplication Error or Application Hang event after this update.Local app-log observations
Failed to create shell snapshot for powershell: Shell snapshot not supported yet for PowerShell.Custom tool call output is missing for call id.codex.exeCPU may be useful for correlation.Expected behavior
Running a Codex task should not cause system-wide pointer or desktop stutter, particularly when the machine still has substantial free memory and no CPU, disk, or GPU saturation.
I am not attaching raw logs because they may contain local paths or session data. I can provide a more focused trace privately if maintainers request one.
R-S1978 commentedon Aug 15, 2026
I can reproduce this issue on Windows 11 with Codex Desktop 26.810.4967.0.
The mouse cursor started stuttering system-wide after prolonged use with multiple Codex tasks. Minimizing Codex did not help, but fully exiting and restarting the Codex app immediately restored smooth cursor movement.
Additional observations:
The cursor was completely smooth on the Windows UAC secure desktop but started stuttering again after returning to the normal desktop.
The main ChatGPT.exe process consumed approximately 1.3–1.5 logical CPU cores before restarting Codex, compared with about 0.24 after the restart.
GPU utilization was approximately 3%, DWM usage was low, and no matching USB, NVIDIA display, or WHEA errors were recorded.
Interrupts peaked between approximately 481,000 and 569,000 per second, similar to the measurements reported in #33382.
Hardware: Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti, 32 GB DDR5, 3440×1440 at 99 Hz.
silentjsy commentedon Aug 16, 2026
Update after testing the latest Windows build:
After updating from Windows package
26.810.6296.0to26.810.7004.0(internal app version26.810.52044), the system-wide mouse stutter is no longer reproducible on this machine.Mouse movement now remains smooth during app startup and while switching between conversations. At this time, version
26.810.7004.0appears to have resolved the mouse-stutter issue for me.R-S1978 commentedon Aug 16, 2026
this solved the issue also for me