Until yesterday i was able to capture images with my asi 294 mc pro and ekos/kstars. As of today i can't capture images. Even a 1 sec exposure takes forever.
I don't know what has changed over night.
I own an ASI 294MC Pro, too. I tested running Build: 2018-10-19T00:07:35Z and can not replicate your problem. Cooling was off in my case as I don't have the power supply available.
I have a similar problem at times. Check the indiserver log for children processes that died. In some situations, closing children corrupt the indiserver process memory. When this happens on my setup, most often the atik driver will die as a result, restart, and somehow will be unable to restore proper communication, leading to this exact symptom.