In *The Empire Strikes Back*, Darth Vader looks at a picture of a shield generator on an ice planet and declares that's the rebel base. How could he know merely by looking at the picture from the probe? In the movie, an imperial officer says the message from the probe was fragmentary, so that might be further reason to distrust it.

It was clear from *A New Hope* he did not have clairvoyance enough to find the rebels' hidden fortress.

Was there something in the novelization that said he had additional knowledge of Hoth?

Edit: I am not looking for an answer that merely says "He used the Force." The use of the Force to sense people seems inconsistent in the movies. Vader didn't sense Luke when he was standing outside the Millennium Falcon right after it was pulled into the Death Star. He didn't sense Leia when he captured her ship at the start of A New Hope. Count Dooku didn't sense Kenobi when Kenobi was hiding on Geonosis. Yet other times, people sense Force users who are light years away.

I am looking more for something that says Vader had actual information.