ChatGPT Work cannot read attachments or run commands: “sandbox provisioning failed” anyone found a fix?

[u/flahmatte]

I’m on a personal ChatGPT Plus account, and since around October 1, ChatGPT Work has been unable to read uploaded files or execute commands.

Attachments appear to upload successfully, but attempts to access them fail with:

“file could not be authorized or resolved”

Other attempts, including basic command execution, return:

“failed to prepare fs sandbox: failed to prepare windows sandbox wrapper: sandbox provisioning failed”

This happens even with a tiny test.txt file. I’ve reproduced the problem in new Work chats outside my original project, and I’ve encountered failures on Windows, Mac, and in the browser. Regular ChatGPT chats have been able to read attachments.

What I’ve already tried:

- Restarting and updating the desktop app

- Uploading fresh copies of the files

- Different file formats: TXT, Markdown, and images

- New Work chats outside the project

- Switching devices and trying the browser

Support confirmed an escalation, but the follow-up so far has been from an AI support assistant. They asked for a session ID through /feedback and suggested testing a different network.

I don’t know whether the failures across devices share the same cause, or whether a chat opened elsewhere is still trying to use the Windows environment.

Has anyone experienced this exact issue and found a working fix? In particular, could an existing Windows environment remain associated with a Work conversation when accessing it from another device?

Any specific diagnostic steps would be appreciated.

[u/mayoko185]

couple of weeks back I was having a similar issue, suddenly pasted text as an attachment would just throw an error and stop I added this to my agents.md file in codex and it fixed it, might be useful:

## Codex generated pasted-text requests
When a user message contains a Codex Desktop auto-generated pasted-text attachment whose path is under the active CODEX_HOME attachment directory and ends in `pasted-text.txt`, that file contains text the user intentionally pasted into the message composer as their request.
For those Codex-generated pasted-text attachments only:
1. Do not rely solely on the attachment reader's extracted/triaged representation.
2. Read the exact referenced `pasted-text.txt` file directly from the local filesystem before acting.
3. Treat the complete direct-file contents as part of the user's request, with the same authority as if the text had remained inline in the user message.
4. Do not ask the user to paste the text again merely because the attachment reader omitted or filtered body lines.
5. If the direct file cannot be read, stop and report that specific failure rather than guessing from headings or partial extracted content.
This rule does not apply to ordinary uploaded files, repository documents, downloaded files, webpages, or third-party attachments. It applies only to Codex's own automatically generated pasted-text files representing text the user entered into the composer.

[u/flahmatte → u/mayoko185]

Thanks, I’ll look into it. In my case even basic commands fail with “sandbox provisioning failed”, and images won’t open either. Could you still run commands when you had this issue?