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1401 Probe 1.0.1

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@nullmoth nullmoth released this 26 Sep 20:46
· 11 commits to main since this release
v1.0.1
be28b0a

What changed in this version

Fixes from the first round of test reports. Thanks to everyone who ran 1.0.0.

  • A freeze no longer loses the rest of the scan. Before it touches a piece of hardware, the probe now writes the
    name of that step to the stick. If the PC locks up, start the stick again and pick the normal scan: it skips the
    one step that froze and finishes everything else. The report says which step was skipped and why.
  • The PCI scan runs one device at a time. In 1.0.0 one desktop froze inside the PCI stage, and its report kept
    only the three stages before it. Now every device's IDs and addresses are saved first, and each device's full
    decode runs on its own afterwards, so a freeze points at one device instead of taking the whole stage.
  • Laptop graphics BIOS. On laptops with a second GPU, the firmware often leaves the card's memory decoding off,
    so 1.0.0 could not read the VBIOS or the chip ID. The probe now turns decoding on for that one read and puts the
    original setting back right after.
  • Graphics driver data. Each GPU's debugfs folder is read once instead of three times. The report now lists what
    the driver actually exposed, and every file it could not read is recorded with the reason.
  • Reports are sealed. Each report has a seal.json: the SHA-256 of every file, plus a keyed check over that
    list. It tells us whether a report came straight off the stick or was changed afterwards. Nothing is sent
    anywhere and nothing in the report changes. Builds from source use their own key or none ("sealed": false).
  • The PCI stage gets 3 minutes instead of 2.

Every earlier version stays up, with its hashes, on the releases page and at https://nullmothsystems.com/probe

About 1401 Probe

Free, offline, and open source.

1401 Probe turns a USB stick into a small scanner for your PC. You start the PC from the stick, it reads what
hardware the machine has, saves one report to the stick, and turns the PC off. Nothing leaves your computer unless
you upload the report yourself. Every report shows us what 1401 needs to support, so if you run it: thank you.

The same how-to, with the rest of the details, is on the site: https://nullmothsystems.com/probe

Downloads

File What it is SHA-256
1401-Probe-Setup.exe The Windows app. It makes the stick for you. Start here. 99e9be8c84f20df90db314a912bd9abd20cc91da333288c28492396cc0c605d8
1401-probe-img.zip The raw stick image, if you don't have Windows or want to flash it yourself 2ec5fa8262ecc3361987e89b4528789f6fcd7973d1250ff493f9bbdd1f656f19
SHA256SUMS.txt Both hashes in one file

Check the installer before you run it

The installer isn't code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen will warn you about it. Before you click past that,
make sure the file is really ours. Its fingerprint is published in DNS, signed with DNSSEC, on a different system
from this download:

dig +short TXT _probe-sha256.nullmothsystems.com

Or on Windows, in PowerShell:

(Resolve-DnsName -Type TXT _probe-sha256.nullmothsystems.com).Strings

Then hash the file you downloaded, from the folder you saved it in:

Get-FileHash .\1401-Probe-Setup.exe

The two SHA-256 values should match exactly. If they don't, don't run it.

What you need

  • The Windows PC you want to scan
  • A USB stick, 1 GB or bigger. It gets erased, so copy anything you want off it first.
  • About 15 minutes
  • Secure Boot turned off for the scan. You turn it back on afterwards, and the app walks you through it.

How to use it

  1. Install. Run 1401-Probe-Setup.exe. When SmartScreen says "Windows protected your PC", click More info,
    then Run anyway.

  2. Make the stick. Open 1401 Probe and click Make the scanner USB stick. If BitLocker is on, click Pause
    BitLocker for 3 restarts     first. Pick your stick, tick the box, and click Erase and make the stick. Only USB
    drives show up in the list, so you can't wipe your main drive by accident.

  3. Turn off Secure Boot and start from the stick. Click Restart into BIOS setup. Find Secure Boot (it's
    usually under Boot or Security), set it to Disabled, then save and exit. As the PC starts, press your boot menu
    key and pick the USB stick marked UEFI. Boot menu keys: ASUS F8, MSI F11, Gigabyte F12, ASRock F11, Dell F12,
    HP F9, Lenovo F12, Acer F12. You can also click Restart now and pick the USB stick in the app and choose
    "Use a device". On the stick's menu, pick 1401 Probe - scan this computer. It starts by itself after 5
    seconds.

  4. Let it scan. It takes 2 to 8 minutes. The last step is a graphics test, and the screen can flicker or go
    black for up to 3 minutes. That's normal. When it says DONE, the report is saved and the PC turns itself off.
    If nothing happens for 5 minutes, hold the power button. Everything up to that point is already saved. Start
    from the stick again and pick the normal scan: it skips the step that froze and finishes the rest. If it
    freezes a second time, pick safe scan, which skips the graphics test.

  5. Put your settings back. Go into the BIOS again (usually Del or F2) and set Secure Boot back to Enabled. Back
    in Windows, open 1401 Probe and click I already scanned - find my report. It checks Secure Boot and BitLocker
    for you and offers to turn BitLocker back on. Your boot order was never changed.

  6. Send the report. Optional, but it's the whole point. Click Show both files. The stick's REPORTS folder
    has a .zip and a .txt with the same name, something like Z790-AORUS_i7-13700K_RTX4070_2026-09-25_a3f1.zip.
    You can open both and read them first. Then go to https://nullmothsystems.com/#send, drag both files onto the
    1402 Card Reader, and click Send. Keep the report ID it gives you (NM-XXXXXXXX).

What it does and doesn't do

  • It reads your hardware and writes one report, to its own stick. That's it.
  • It has no network, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth drivers, so it can't connect to anything.
  • Before it scans, it marks every drive except its own stick read-only. It never mounts your internal drives.
  • It never changes BIOS/UEFI settings. Secure Boot is the one setting you change, yourself.
  • Serial numbers, UUIDs, MAC addresses and your Windows product key are removed from the report before it's saved.
  • Nothing is uploaded automatically. Sending the report is up to you.

No Windows?

Download 1401-probe-img.zip, unzip it, and write 1401-probe.img to a USB stick with balenaEtcher, or Rufus in
DD mode. Then do steps 3 and 4, turn Secure Boot back on in your BIOS yourself, and send the two files from the
stick's REPORTS folder like in step 6.

Done with the stick?

Open 1401 Probe, click I already scanned - find my report, then Make it an ordinary USB drive again.

Build it yourself

Everything builds in Docker containers pinned by digest, and nothing gets installed on your machine. From a clone
of this repo:

NM_ALLOW_NO_PRIVATE=1 ./build.sh all

The README has the details and the QEMU test that boots the real stick image.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. The parts it's built from (Linux, GRUB, BusyBox, Python, Alpine packages, firmware files) keep
their own licenses, listed in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt on every stick. The NullMoth name and moth logo aren't
covered by the GPL (section 7(e)), so a modified version has to drop them.

Found a bug, or a machine it chokes on? Open an issue.

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