You did not say if it was an Edge or Forerunner.
Garmin Connect and Training Center can be very picky about uploads. You might try some demo versions of TopoFusion or SportTracks etc to try and get as many tracks off your unit as possible. They can be manually loaded into GC or GTC later.
Then, since you said it is an older unit, I suspect that you have not upgraded the unit software. That could be why your unit will not load into GC. You do not want to upgrade until you have as many tracks as possible off your unit because upgrading will erase all data.