SAN JOSE, Calif. - Some Yahoo Inc. Web sites and services stumbled for the second time in less than a week Thursday as the Internet giant worked to resolve a hardware problem.
In the latest glitch, users may have experienced a slow response from the company's servers from about 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Some people also reported that they were unable to log onto Yahoo's instant messaging program.
The company released a statement describing the problem as an "isolated hardware-related issue."
It was unrelated to Tuesday's incident in which Yahoo and several other Web sites were sluggish or entirely inaccessible for two hours.
Akamai Technologies Inc., which is supposed to provide services to improve the reliability of large Web sites, claims the problems were caused by a "sophisticated" attack.
Yahoo users also reported problems this week with its newly upgraded e-mail service. On Monday night, some users received confusing notices that their accounts had been suspended for exceeding storage limits when that was not the case.
Within hours, users' accounts were upgraded with higher storage limits.
