cpu frequency stuck at lowest speed

[CozzyD]

My laptop (Dell Latitude D810) will no longer run above 800 MHz in FC6 (it should go from 800 MHz to 1.86 GHz).

output of cpufreq-info is:

cpufrequtils 002: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2006
Report errors and bugs to linux@brodo.de, please.
analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: centrino
  CPUs which need to switch frequency at the same time: 0
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 1.87 GHz
  available frequency steps: 1.87 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 1.33 GHz, 1.07 GHz, 800 MHz
  available cpufreq governors: ondemand, userspace, performance
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 800 MHz.
                  The governor "performance" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 800 MHz.

cpufreq-set -f 1.87 GHz returns no error, but doesn't change the processor speed.

I think this may have started happening when I did a system update and it installed a new kernel (though I'm not using that kernel for fear of having to recompile some drivers), though I'm not sure if it actually has anything to do with that (It did work at one point), and I just noticed this problem recently (that is, quite a bit after the kernel update).

Bios settings say that speedstep is enabled, so that isn't the problem.

Any ideas? I'm doing particle physics simulations, and the extra speed could really come in handy!

[CozzyD]

Some additional things:

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
800000

I suspect this is the problem, but how does one edit that file? vi and gedit can't write to it (with root privileges)

cpuspeed
Error: No speed steps could be determined!


I suspect that's also problematic....