[Windows] Codex Desktop fails to load sessions and freezes after update; persistent processes require forced restart #54037

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

26.1007.9446.0 (Microsoft Store installation)

What subscription do you have?

Not provided.

What platform is your computer?

Windows 11 x64.

What issue are you seeing?

After an app update on October 14, 2026, Codex Desktop opened but did not load the contents of existing conversations, including local sessions and sessions created on other devices. Creating a new conversation initially left the model selector at Loading model. After restarting internal Codex processes, the model became available, but submitting a message still froze the interface and conversations still did not load.

Closing and reopening the app window did not fix the problem. With the window closed, PowerShell still showed 19 ChatGPT.exe processes and 2 codex.exe processes running.

This has happened repeatedly after Codex Desktop updates on this Windows machine. The exact trigger and root cause have not been isolated.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

These are the steps observed during the October 14 incident; the failure is recurring but is not confirmed to occur after every update:

1. Update the Microsoft Store Codex Desktop app to version 26.1007.9446.0 and launch it on Windows 11 x64.
2. Open an existing local conversation and a conversation created on another device. Their contents do not load.
3. Create a new conversation. The model selector initially shows Loading model.
4. Restart the internal Codex processes. The model selector then shows an available model, but opening conversations and submitting a message still fail or freeze the interface.
5. Close the app window and reopen it. The problem persists.
6. Close the window again and inspect processes in PowerShell. In this incident, 19 ChatGPT.exe and 2 codex.exe processes remained active.

No private session IDs or project details are included in this public report.

What is the expected behavior?

Existing conversations should load after an update, and a new conversation should initialize a model and accept messages without freezing. Closing the application should not leave processes in a state that prevents a normal relaunch.

Additional information

• Test-NetConnection api.openai.com -Port 443 returned True. This confirms TCP connectivity to that host and port, but does not establish that all application services were reachable.
• Successful recovery: Terminating only the remaining processes whose executable paths belonged to OpenAI Codex, then reopening the app, restored conversations and their context. No app data was deleted and no reinstall was needed.
• Hypothesis, not confirmed cause: A stale or hung background process after updating may interfere with app startup or session loading. The process counts and recovery above are observations; they do not by themselves establish the underlying defect.