ok, so it is basically a 'wallet address' and is basically useless with out the key?
Correct.
Check your harddrive for any files called "wallet.dat".
Most of the time there will be a folder in your drive at C:\Users\(your pc username)\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin
Check if you have a folder like that.
Do you remember what miner you had running? Do you remember if you had Bitcoin core running?
thanks for the info fellas,
i do not recall the miner software. that was many many moons ago.....
the actual c: drive has been formatted many times since then, and the folder ( appdata) was a copy that contained 'libraries' which is a copy of all my saved game folders. its amazing that it even survived this far. i will do another search tonight on all the hard disks. Im like a digital hoarder, i save everything. I still have the original napster.exe installer.