Often failure of normalization is caused by a gross mismatch between the template and the control image. The example below illustrates such a case.
Note that the grid has been enabled, indicating the origin as the intersection of the heavy lines. Obviously, the origin in the template (upper row) is placed in a well defined anatomical position, while it is located at the border in the control image (lower row). There the blue lines indicate the approximate position of the template origin. A simple procedure with the data inspector allows setting the origin to this anatomical location.
Although the control images are shifted towards the end of the field-of view, the normalization worked after saving the images with the modified origin and using them instead of the original data.