I'm a little late joining this discussion, but it's the closest thing to what I'm experiencing. I have Sketchup Pro 2015. I have some older models I created ten years ago in older versions of Sketchup (not sure which versions), but suffice it to say I can't open them. This is bad because I'm doing a new project for an old client and I can't open my original model. The error message is simply "Failed to Open Model".
Any suggestions?