Codex bundled plugins became unavailable after reinstalling Chrome extension on Windows

Codex
1

Codex bundled plugins became unavailable after reinstalling Chrome extension on Windows

Environment

  • Platform: Windows
  • App: Codex Desktop
  • Affected bundled plugins:
    • Browser / in-app browser
    • Chrome extension integration
    • Computer Use

Summary

After using the “reinstall Chrome extension” action in Codex, several bundled tools became unavailable. Computer Use stopped working, and the Browser tool also became unstable or disconnected. The issue later recovered after restarting and waiting for the bundled plugin state to rebuild.

This looks like the bundled plugin runtime or temporary plugin marketplace entered a partial state during the Chrome extension reinstall process.

Symptoms

After reinstalling the Chrome extension:

  • Codex settings showed plugin unavailable messages.
  • Computer Use was unavailable.
  • The Computer Use helper executable existed in the plugin cache, but it was not running.
  • Browser tool calls failed with an error similar to:
browserBackend.callTool: Target page, context or browser has been closed

Relevant log messages

Codex repeatedly logged:

computer-use notify config ensure finished platform=win32 reason=missing-helper-path status=skipped

computer-use native pipe startup failed
errorMessage="Windows Computer Use helper paths are unavailable"

There was also a bundled plugin marketplace rebuild failure:

BundledPluginsMarketplace bundled_plugins_marketplace_resolve_failed
errorCode=EBUSY
errorMessage="EBUSY: resource busy or locked, rmdir '%USERPROFILE%\.codex\.tmp\bundled-marketplaces\openai-bundled\plugins\chrome\extension-host\windows\x64'"

Observed state

The Computer Use helper executable still existed under the normal bundled plugin cache, but the temporary bundled marketplace appeared incomplete.

The temporary bundled marketplace folder only contained the Chrome plugin, while other bundled plugins such as Computer Use were missing.

Generic path shape:

%USERPROFILE%\.codex\.tmp\bundled-marketplaces\openai-bundled\plugins

Possible cause

It seems that reinstalling the Chrome extension triggered Codex to reconcile or rebuild the bundled plugin marketplace. During that process, the Chrome extension host directory was still locked by Windows, causing an EBUSY failure.

After the partial rebuild, Codex could no longer resolve the Computer Use helper path, even though the actual helper executable still existed in the plugin cache.

Recovery

The issue eventually recovered after:

  1. Fully exiting Codex.
  2. Fully exiting Chrome.
  3. Ensuring no extension-host.exe process was running.
  4. Restarting Codex.
  5. Waiting for the bundled plugin runtime to rebuild.

Expected behavior

Reinstalling the Chrome extension should not break unrelated bundled plugins such as Computer Use or Browser.

If the bundled plugin marketplace rebuild fails because a file is locked, Codex should either retry safely or preserve the previous working plugin state.

Actual behavior

The bundled plugin marketplace entered a partial state. Computer Use became unavailable with missing-helper-path, and Browser became disconnected until the runtime state recovered.