governor changing max speed for no reason

For supported CPU's (which is almost all of them, these days), Ubuntu will scale the CPU's clock speed based on demand. This is unlikely to reduce performance. Do you have any reason to believe that your CPU is running slow even when you'd get performance increased when it's running fast.

If you're running CPU-intensive "idle priority" programs like Folding@Home, then you may want to disable CPU frequency scaling and keep it its full clock speed all the time. Otherwise, Ubuntu's default configuration will probably work for you.

I have reason to believe because it scales it back to max 800 and will not increase it even under load.
In the 2nd part of that text, it shows it has been limited to between 800 and 800 whereas it should be as the 1st part of the log between 800 and 1.73GHz. If it was truly working and "on demand" then it would scale it up as well.
It is really slowing my computer down as I also run VirtualBox on it.
What would cause it to change after only a few minutes?

Are you able to manually increase the frequency, using the techniques described here?
http://embraceubuntu.com/2005/11/04/enabling-cpu-frequency-scaling/

I ran the following and each time the prompt was returned with no messages:
sudo cpufreq-selector -f 1300000 (it paused for 30 se3conds after running this)
sudo chmod +s /usr/bin/cpufreq-selector
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gnome-applets (no questions asked with this, it just returned the prompt).

I then tried clicking on the applet and select 1.73GHz but it stays at 800MHz.

What is the output of this command?

cat /proc/cpuinfo

Inspiron-9300:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 13
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.73GHz
stepping : 8
cpu MHz : 800.000
cache size : 2048 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe nx up bts est tm2
bogomips : 1596.57
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 32 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
power management:

Any ideas what the problem might be?
Same thing this morning, it stops after about 15mins and reverts to 800MHz:
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 1.73 GHz
  available frequency steps: 1.73 GHz, 1.33 GHz, 1.07 GHz, 800 MHz
  available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 800 MHz.

any ideas on what else to try?
is there something other than cpu freq that can ramp up the cpu?

I have posted the results below.
It took about 25mins before the givernor throttled the speed back. The full fan speed did not even come and now I cannot change it back to 1.73.
The fan successfully controlled the temperature down so why throttle it afterwards?
I am running a video, FF, Thunderbird, a disk usage analyser, and system testing util to try and load it. The fan only comes on at above 60oC and even then it's only half fan speed (fairly quiet), not the full fan speed that I had in the past on Windows.
So, how come when it is set to ondemand, it throttles it to 800 when it gets to this temperature and prevents me from changing it to performance?

[code]
j@j-Inspiron-9300:~$ sudo cpufreq-info
cpufrequtils 007: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009
Report errors and bugs to <email address hidden>, please.
analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: acpi-cpufreq
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
  maximum transition latency: 10.0 us.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 1.73 GHz
  available frequency steps: 1.73 GHz, 1.33 GHz, 1.07 GHz, 800 MHz
  available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance
  current policy: [B]frequency should be within 800 MHz and 1.73 GHz.
                  The governor "ondemand" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.[/B]
  current CPU frequency is 800 MHz (asserted by call to hardware).
  cpufreq stats: 1.73 GHz:28.76%, 1.33 GHz:1.14%, 1.07 GHz:1.28%, 800 MHz:68.83% (6017)

j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ date
Sat Feb 5 10:20:04 CET 2011
j@j-Inspiron-9300: cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM/temperature
temperature: 39 C

[B]{switched to performance in the middle here}[/B]
{now fully on 1.72GHz}
j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ cpufreq-info
cpufrequtils 007: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009
Report errors and bugs to <email address hidden>, please.
analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: acpi-cpufreq
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
  maximum transition latency: 10.0 us.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 1.73 GHz
  available frequency steps: 1.73 GHz, 1.33 GHz, 1.07 GHz, 800 MHz
  available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance
  current policy: [B]frequency should be within 800 MHz and 1.73 GHz[/B].
                  The governor "performance" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 1.73 GHz.
  cpufreq stats: 1.73 GHz:49.04%, 1.33 GHz:0.71%, 1.07 GHz:0.81%, 800 MHz:49.44% (8722)

j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ date
Sat Feb 5 10:29:33 CET 2011
j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM/temperature
temperature: 45 C

j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ date
Sat Feb 5 10:32:14 CET 2011
j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM/temperature
temperature: 56 C

j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ date
Sat Feb 5 10:33:51 CET 2011
j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM/temperature
temperature: 57 C

j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ date
Sat Feb 5 10:35:25 CET 2011
j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM/temperature
temperature: 56 C

j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ date
Sat Feb 5 10:37:58 CET 2011
j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM/temperature
temperature: 62 C

j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ date
Sat Feb 5 10:39:41 CET 2011
j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM/temperature
temperature: 65 C
[B]{half fan speed comes on here but not full speed yet}[/B]

j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ date
Sat Feb 5 10:43:14 CET 2011
j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM/temperature
temperature: 57 C

j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ date
Sat Feb 5 10:44:32 CET 2011
j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM/temperature
temperature: 59 C

j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ date
Sat Feb 5 10:46:22 CET 2011
j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM/temperature
temperature: 69 C
[B] {half fan on again}[/B]
[B]
{throttled back here to 800 and will not increase}[/B]
j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ date
Sat Feb 5 10:51:45 CET 2011
j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM/temperature
temperature: 43 C

j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ cpu-freq info
cpu-freq: command not found
j@j-Inspiron-9300:/$ cpufreq-info
cpufrequtils 007: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009
Report errors and bugs to <email address hidden>, please.
analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: acpi-cpufreq
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
  maximum transition latency: 10.0 us.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 1.73 GHz
  available frequency steps: 1.73 GHz, 1.33 GHz, 1.07 GHz, 800 MHz
  available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance
  current policy: [B]frequency should be within 800 MHz and 800 MHz.
                  The governor "performance" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.[/B]
  current CPU frequency is 800 MHz.
  cpufreq stats: 1.73 GHz:62.92%, 1.33 GHz:0.40%, 1.07 GHz:0.45%, 800 MHz:36.22% (8723)

[/code]

I found this in the cpufreqd.conf:

##
# Special Rules
##
# CPU Too hot!
[Rule]
name=CPU Too Hot
acpi_temperature=55-100
cpu_interval=50-100
profile=Performance Low
[/Rule]

Could that be the problem?

Edit: I changed that to 70 and it still doesn;t work.
Something is changing the scaling_max_freq file back to 800000 even though I changed it to 1733000 manually.
I just went in and edited the file back to 1733000 but when I next open it it has changed back to 800000.
That to me seems like a cpufreq bug?!

Potential fix:

I had a similar problem back in 2007: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9488 In my case a broken BIOS was the reason. As I could not get a newer (fixed) BIOS, I found two workarounds: a) using the processor.ignore_ppc flag, and b) (the "final" solution): using a kernel parameter acpi_osi="!Windows 2006"

jjjjj,

Did you find a solution? I have the exact same problem..