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My Macbook pro (early 2011, upgraded to 10.11) started behaving strangely lately. It started randomly crashing multiple times of the day, and the only information I've been able to find is the following message in the logs.
Oct 26 10:07:01 localhost kernel[0]: Previous shutdown cause: -128
Any idea what might have caused it? I've looked up the cause code, but it didn't provide me any additionl information and I couldn't find anything online.

Edit: I did two memtest runs and they both returned no errors on the memory. I've also tried swapping the memory banks around without any improvement. AHT same thing, doesn't find any error.

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Check your memory.

From Apple Support Communities

There is also a really good procedure for testing hardware and software of your Mac on Apple's Support site https://support.apple.com/en-us/ts3742

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The shutdown cause -128 is related to the hardware issues. For example it may be related to RAM, although some people suggest that it can be also related to battery time span (it surpassed the end of its life), so basically it tells you that you shouldn't re-cell this battery due to proprietary circuitry that protects the battery. Therefore you should try to plug in your Mac into a power source and check whether it helps.

Although keep in mind that -128 is a general unknown hardware error ("catch all" code), so it can be anything else. So in general you should:

See also: Are OS X shutdown cause and sleep cause numbers listed/explained anywhere?

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Shutdown cause -128 is an unknown shutdown cause. That means the system doesn't know what's the reason why the computer shutdown.

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