Skype restores service after outage last week

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Internet phone service Skype restored service this weekend after a routine software upgrade left millions of users unhooked since last week.

The service, founded by the Scandinavian entrepreneurs behind file-sharing service Kazaa and now owned by online auction company eBay (EBAY.O), restored service on Saturday and explained the outage on Monday on its Web site.

"The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users' computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update," the company said on its blog.

The high number of restarts revealed a bug in its network resource software, preventing a "self-healing" function of its software from working, the company said.

Skype said no malicious activities caused the problem.