Codex version
Windows Store desktop app 26.715.8383.0
Platform
Windows x64, build 10.0.19044
What issue are you seeing?
The Windows desktop app's electron-sampler repeatedly launches this PowerShell command and logs a failure:
$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop'; Get-CimInstance Win32_Process | Select-Object ProcessId,ParentProcessId | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 2
The retry has no effective single-flight/backoff behavior. In a clean desktop session it recurs roughly every 10–20 seconds. During longer Agent/browser workloads, PowerShell/browser/cleanup children can accumulate until process queries slow down and the machine runs out of usable memory.
A representative warning is:
warning [electron-sampler] Failed to collect child process snapshot errorMessage="Command failed: powershell.exe -NoProfile -NonInteractive -Command ... Get-CimInstance Win32_Process ... ConvertTo-Json -Depth 2"
Steps to reproduce
- Launch the Microsoft Store Codex desktop app on Windows.
- Run a local Agent task (browser/Playwright work makes the impact easier to observe, but the sampler failure also occurs while otherwise idle).
- Inspect
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Codex\Logs\...\codex-desktop-*-t0-*.log.
- Observe repeated
electron-sampler child-process snapshot failures.
- With a longer browser task, observe increasing PowerShell/browser/cleanup process pressure and eventually severe UI/memory degradation.
Diagnostics already performed
powershell.exe exists and resolves from PATH; current-session ENOENT count is 0.- PowerShell profiles are absent, so this is not a profile loop.
winmgmt is running and the WMI repository reports consistent.- The exact full snapshot command succeeds with
EXIT=0 from an elevated command prompt.
- From a standard-user prompt,
Get-CimInstance Win32_Process -ErrorAction Stop succeeds and returned 473 rows.
- The standard-user full Select/ConvertTo-Json pipeline returned exit code 1 with no stderr.
- The packaged desktop app still retries the failed command: a fresh session logged 8 failures in about 85 seconds, then continued increasing.
- A clean session had 0
taskkill and 0 conhost log references initially; those are observed only after heavier timed-out Agent/browser activity.
- During a previous failure storm, WMI Operational event 5858 reported
0x80041032 with Throttling Idle/stack Tasks in hitting Max Memory quota for repeated Win32_Process queries.
- The issue persisted across Windows restarts and Codex desktop restarts.
Expected behavior
The desktop app should collect the process snapshot successfully in its packaged/non-elevated context. If collection fails, it should be single-flight, use bounded exponential backoff, and ensure the exact child process is closed before retrying. Ideally this process-tree sampling should use a native Windows API rather than repeatedly spawning PowerShell/WMI.
Additional context
Issue #24913 contains the same electron-sampler warning in a different Windows desktop failure, and #17208 reports repeated PowerShell launches in the IDE extension. This report is focused specifically on the desktop sampler retry/process-buildup loop.
No project source, prompts, credentials, or private workspace data are included here.
Codex version
Windows Store desktop app
26.715.8383.0Platform
Windows x64, build
10.0.19044What issue are you seeing?
The Windows desktop app's
electron-samplerrepeatedly launches this PowerShell command and logs a failure:The retry has no effective single-flight/backoff behavior. In a clean desktop session it recurs roughly every 10–20 seconds. During longer Agent/browser workloads, PowerShell/browser/cleanup children can accumulate until process queries slow down and the machine runs out of usable memory.
A representative warning is:
Steps to reproduce
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Codex\Logs\...\codex-desktop-*-t0-*.log.electron-samplerchild-process snapshot failures.Diagnostics already performed
powershell.exeexists and resolves from PATH; current-sessionENOENTcount is 0.winmgmtis running and the WMI repository reports consistent.EXIT=0from an elevated command prompt.Get-CimInstance Win32_Process -ErrorAction Stopsucceeds and returned 473 rows.taskkilland 0conhostlog references initially; those are observed only after heavier timed-out Agent/browser activity.0x80041032withThrottling Idle/stack Tasks in hitting Max Memory quotafor repeatedWin32_Processqueries.Expected behavior
The desktop app should collect the process snapshot successfully in its packaged/non-elevated context. If collection fails, it should be single-flight, use bounded exponential backoff, and ensure the exact child process is closed before retrying. Ideally this process-tree sampling should use a native Windows API rather than repeatedly spawning PowerShell/WMI.
Additional context
Issue #24913 contains the same
electron-samplerwarning in a different Windows desktop failure, and #17208 reports repeated PowerShell launches in the IDE extension. This report is focused specifically on the desktop sampler retry/process-buildup loop.No project source, prompts, credentials, or private workspace data are included here.