mysql Failed to read auto-increment value from storage engine

I started getting this error a couple of weeks back when running insert statements:

Duplicate entry '127' for key 'PRIMARY'

... even though my table was set to auto increment. I went in and changed the auto_increment value from 127 to 128 then I started getting this error:

1467 - Failed to read auto-increment value from storage engine

I eventually figured out that the table had been initially created with tinyint columns for the ID not standard ints ... so basically it couldn't comprehend numbers bigger than 127. I switched the column type to proper integers and that solved the issue.

Hope that helps someone :)

I had the same error but in my case I had about 1.5k records in the table. I fixed it by resetting the AUTO INCREMEN like that:

ALTER TABLE `table_name`  AUTO_INCREMENT = 1

For my part, I made a dumb mistake. I had earlier altered my table and changed the name of the AUTO_INCREMENT column from ID to id. So, given column names are case-sensitive, subsequent inserts couldn't find the original column.

Problem could absolutely be that: convert 18446744073709551615 to hex and you'll find
$FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF.
If your field is an unsigned 64bit you reach its limit.