Environment:
- Windows 11 Pro 25H2, build 26200.9168, 64-bit
- ChatGPT/Codex desktop app: 26.814.5167.0
- Bundled codex-cli: 0.148.0-alpha.15
Summary:
Some local Work/Codex conversations cannot be archived in the Windows desktop app. A conversation can initially open and accept new messages normally. After selecting Archive, archiving fails and the conversation becomes unusable. Subsequent messages return:
thread not found: <thread-id>
The task then displays a red error indicator.
Reproduction:
- Open an existing local Work/Codex conversation.
- Send a message and confirm that it still responds.
- Select Archive from the conversation menu.
- Archiving fails.
- Try sending another message.
- The app now returns
thread not found: <thread-id>.
Observed internal archive error:
failed to archive session: thread-store internal error: failed to archive thread: The system cannot find the file specified. (os error 2)
This has been reproduced on six local Work/Codex conversations. A read-only scan identified 17 active conversations sharing the same risky path format, although I did not intentionally trigger the failure on all 17.
Technical evidence:
The transcript files still exist. The affected local database records store rollout_path using the Windows extended-path prefix:
\\?\C:\Users\<user>\.codex\sessions\...\rollout-<thread-id>.jsonl
For diagnosis only, after creating complete backups, removing only the \\?\ prefix from one selected database path allowed the local thread/archive operation to complete successfully. The transcript was moved into archived_sessions and the task was marked archived.
However, unarchiving the same conversation recreated the problematic path format, and archiving failed again. This strongly suggests a Windows extended-path handling problem in the archive/unarchive workflow.
Secondary sidebar problem:
After the repaired archive succeeds, the conversation can still appear in Recents after restarting the app. Clicking the stale entry displays a message that the conversation is archived; only then does it disappear from Recents. It is correctly present in Settings → Archived conversations and can be deleted there.
Expected behavior:
- Archive should move the local transcript and remove the task from Recents without corrupting its usability.
- Unarchive should not recreate a path format that prevents the task from being archived again.
- The sidebar should refresh immediately after a successful archive.
Impact:
Affected conversations cannot be archived or deleted through the normal desktop interface. Because Work conversations must be archived before deletion, users can become stuck with broken, undeletable entries.