AN FRANCISCO, Jan. 16 — Sun Microsystems Inc., still reeling from the collapse of the Internet bubble and facing steep competitive pressures, posted its largest quarterly loss ever today.

The results were hurt by charges related to two previous acquisitions, and from costs associated with layoffs and company restructuring. Excluding those one-time charges, Sun — which makes powerful computers for businesses — broke even, slightly exceeding the performance estimates of Wall Street analysts.

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Departing from recent practice, the company declined today to provide analysts with projections for its performance this quarter, which ends March 31. The company also said that it would not hold a midquarter call with financial analysts to discuss its performance.

The projections are relied upon by Wall Street analysts and investors. But a growing number of public companies have said they are finding it difficult to give accurate projections because the business environment remains murky — the reasoning Sun Microsystems used today for its decision.

"It's difficult to provide a meaningful forecast," said Steve McGowan, Sun's chief financial officer. "Times are still uncertain."

In Sun's quarterly conference call today, Mr. McGowan urged analysts to make some inferences about the current quarter's results from past seasonal sales patterns. But when analysts pressed him, noting that seasonal patterns could vary greatly, Mr. McGowan said, "I'll let you take your best cut and judgment on that."

Previously, Sun had told analysts that it would return to profitability by the middle of this year. The company said it was neither affirming nor backing away from that earlier position.

The call today was primarily about Sun's second fiscal quarter, which ended Dec. 29. For that quarter, Sun reported that it lost $2.28 billion, or 72 cents a share, its largest quarterly loss ever. That return compares with a loss of $431 million, or 13 cents a share, in the period a year earlier.

This quarter's figure includes expenses of $2.125 billion, some of which is known as good will impairment indirectly related to a fall in the value of two companies Sun acquired, Cobalt Networks and HighGround System. As part of its expense, the company took a $308 million charge for costs associated partly with a restructuring that has involved the cutting of some 3,100 jobs, with 1,300 more layoffs planned.

Excluding those charges, the company reported earnings that were slightly better than break-even. That exceeds the projections of Wall Street analysts, who expected a loss of 2 cents a share.

Sun reported that its sales were $2.9 billion, roughly in line with the projections of analysts.

Shares of Sun, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif., fell 17 cents, to $3.70, before the report and as much as another 15 cents after hours.

Sun, while considered a financial and technological stalwart, has faced a growing threat in the sale of high-performance servers from those using the Linux operating system rather than the Unix system Sun primarily employs.

Linux systems can run on servers based on Intel microprocessors, rather than higher-price Sun processors, noted A. M. Sacconaghi Jr., an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. "That is an inexorable threat," he said.

On the upside, the company noted an increase in gross margins, a closely watched measure of the company's profits, minus the cost of producing its goods. The company's gross margin of 43.3 percent was slightly higher than last quarter, and 6.7 percent higher than in the quarter a year earlier.

The company said that gross margins were helped by the lower cost of its products' components, although price competition eroded some of those gains.