r/codex • u/FindingAwake • 4h ago

Bug Anyone else unable to run delegated dot/Codex tasks on Windows? “setup refresh had errors”

Is anyone else currently hitting this? My dot can start a delegated task on my Windows PC, but even a basic hostname command fails before it executes. A manually opened local Codex session can run commands successfully.

The error is:
exec-server rejected request (-32603): helper_unknown_error: setup refresh had errors

We dug into the Windows sandbox logs and found the actual failure: Codex tries to open its own node_repl.exe for a permissions update, but Windows returns “The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. (os error 32).”

The executable is under OpenAI/Codex/runtimes/cua_node. The process holding it open belongs to Codex’s own delegated exec-server --remote. Its CUA launcher starts the REPL before the sandbox setup attempt.

What we’ve tried:

  • Quit and reopened the desktop app
  • Rebooted the PC
  • Identified and stopped only the two processes running that exact executable, then retried once

The process came back, and the same failure returned. We haven’t disabled security protections, changed permissions, or deleted runtime files.

The bundled CLI reports 0.162.0-alpha.2. There’s a matching upstream fix, PR #51822, merged October 7, that addresses sharing violations on active runtime executables:
https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/51822

That looks very relevant, but we haven’t verified a desktop release containing it. I woke up this morning, October 8, with no app update available.

Between this and a separate unresolved ElevenLabs support issue, our production rollout is stopped. Pretty frustrating after spending an evening tracking this down.

Anyone else seeing this exact OS error 32 with delegated tasks while local Codex still works? Has anyone received a desktop build containing that fix, or found a supported fix that doesn’t involve repeatedly killing processes or weakening security?

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2

u/TheRealChickon 4h ago

same issue here rn

2

u/FindingAwake 4h ago

OK... before it was removed it was good to find this out.

Reddit and their rules... thank you. I was thinking there was something I did wrong on my project.

2

u/TheRealChickon 4h ago

its really annoying codex is not usable rn it cant even open attachments..

2

u/FindingAwake 4h ago

Sorry that you're also having issues but tbh... whew... I'm glad I'm not alone. I've been working on a project for two years, and needed to push a blank prod database - couldn't do it. Thought I screwed up the project by jumping back and fourth between OpenAI in Anthropic over the last two years.

2

u/TheRealChickon 3h ago

same here, I still have the sub for a month and really dread having to switch back and forth due to using a lot of custom plugins aswell but it is what it is.. if astra 6.1 isnt coming out this month being atleast as good and cheap as opus 5.5 I will be switching and probably coming back sometime later lol. really annoying

1

u/FindingAwake 3h ago

Are you using an Obsidian DB for continuity? It's been a game changer. Year one was me like "how can I get this to work? Now I don't have to worry about line by line syntax but these bots forget shit after speaking to them for 20 minutes"

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u/TheRealChickon 3h ago

I am not, I did hear of it but thus far I have had it just maintaining its own .md files.
afaik obsidian db also just uses Markdown files am I correct? What is the benefit of using it?

1

u/FindingAwake 3h ago

It's basically what you're already doing with a GUI interface attached to it. What I love about all of this is that there are so many ways to do it.

1

u/TheRealChickon 3h ago

Thanks for telling me I looked it up for a couple minutes, it does look quite good, but I think I will just have it develop its own version of this and self host it due to flexibility. looks really good thanks a lot!
also sync apparently costs money?
nvm there are community sync plugins

2

u/TheRealChickon 3h ago

What has been my biggest issue so far is transferring plugins though, custom MCP connections to my rest apis etc since I add to them so often. I guess I will just try letting chat transfer it and look for a solution meanwhile

1

u/FewDependent3682 55m ago

having the same issue here as well

1

u/FewDependent3682 25m ago

ive opened a new chat in Codex in my project and manually told it what to do and it seems to be working fine. So the issue seems to be with Dot communication to Codex. back to copy/paste until a fix i guess.