[Paraview] cannot load *.pvs state files from v2.6 in current version of paraview

[Amy Bengtson]

Dear paraview list:

I am new to using paraview, and I would appreciate your help with the  
following question. In our group, we have some old state files (*.pvs  
extension) that were created with paraview version 2.6 (according to  
the header of the file). I cannot load these .pvs state files in the  
current version of paraview (3.6.2). If I try to load the *pvs files,  
I get this error: "ERROR: In /Users/partyd/Kitware/ParaView-3.6/ 
ParaView3/VTK/IO/vtkXMLParser.cxx, line 484 vtkPVXMLParser  
(0x23506f10): Error parsing XML in stream at line 1, column 1, byte  
index 1: not well-formed (invalid token)
Root does not exist. Either state file could not be opened or it does  
not contain valid xml"
If I try to open the *pvs files, I get this error: "A reader for [file  
name] could not be found".

Is there a way to load old state files ( *.pvs made in version 2.6) in  
the current version?

I have searched the mailing list archives and did not find an answer.  
If the documentation for this is already available, please point me in  
the correct direction.

Thanks so much,

Amy Bengtson
amykb at umich.edu