codex - 💡(How to fix) Fix Windows Codex app: bundled node.exe fails with Access is denied, breaking Node REPL and Browser Use plugin [1 comments, 2 participants]

& 'C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\OpenAI.Codex_26.422.2339.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0\app\resources\node.exe' --version

Output-Program 'node.exe' failed to run: Access is denied

### What is the expected behavior?

Codex’s bundled node.exe should execute successfully, allowing node_repl and Browser Use / in-app browser automation to work.

### Additional information

Troubleshooting tried
Uninstalled McAfee
Ransomware protection page became accessible afterward
Reinstalled Codex
Tried launching Codex as administrator
Tried giving Codex full permissions
Verified Browser Use plugin file exists:
C:\Users\Aniruddha Debnath.codex\plugins\cache\openai-bundled\browser-use\0.1.0-alpha1\scripts\browser-client.mjs
Active Codex process still runs from WindowsApps
Bundled node.exe remains blocked with Access is denied

Edit: for the codex team, this is how 5.5 xhigh diagnosed the situation, i am a nontechnical user, i have zero idea about how all of this works--

Copy-paste this into the GitHub issue:

### Summary

On Windows, Codex’s in-app browser / Browser Use runtime failed with:

```text
failed to execute Node: Access is denied. (os error 5)
This was reproducible even with a minimal Node REPL call, so the issue is not specific to Browser Use navigation.

Environment
OS: Windows
Codex app install path involved:
C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\OpenAI.Codex_26.422.2437.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0\app\resources
Affected packaged helpers:
node.exe
rg.exe
What failed
node resolved to:

C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\OpenAI.Codex_26.422.2437.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0\app\resources\node.exe
Running:

node --version
failed with:

Program 'node.exe' failed to run: Access is denied
The Node REPL MCP also failed with:

failed to execute Node: Access is denied. (os error 5)
rg.exe from the same app resources directory showed the same access-denied behavior.

What worked
The user-cache Codex runtime copy of Node worked:

C:\Users\Aniruddha Debnath\.cache\codex-runtimes\codex-primary-runtime\dependencies\node\bin\node.exe
Running that directly returned:

v24.14.0
Copying the working node.exe and rg.exe into the earlier per-session PATH directory:

C:\Users\Aniruddha Debnath\.codex\tmp\arg0\codex-arg0ZQRaO8\
made these commands work again:

node --version
rg --version
After that, the Node REPL MCP worked and the in-app browser opened successfully.

Suspected root cause
Codex is resolving helper binaries from the protected WindowsApps package directory. In this environment, Windows denies execution of those packaged helper binaries from spawned tool/MCP contexts.

Suggested fix
Please avoid resolving helper binaries like node.exe / rg.exe from the protected WindowsApps app resources path when spawning Codex tool runtimes.

Prefer an unpacked per-user executable runtime path, for example:

%USERPROFILE%\.cache\codex-runtimes\codex-primary-runtime\dependencies\node\bin\node.exe
Or copy/unpack helper executables into a per-user/per-session executable cache and prepend that directory to PATH before starting MCP/tool subprocesses.

The workaround confirms the browser runtime itself is fine once Node can execute. The permanent fix should be in Codex’s helper binary resolution / PATH setup on Windows, not in Browser Use itself.


This should give maintainers the important bits: exact error, exact bad path, exact working path, workaround, and the likely product-side fix.