I cannot get it running on Win Server 2012. Tried several machines, everywhere it says that it cannot download the miner, because of windows defender.

Which is totally not true because defender is not even available on Windows Server 2012. Especially on the Core installation.
Firewall is disabled so nothing should stop it from downloading - but zero luck.

So then I tried to copy the specified folder from Win 7 machine which was able to download  and run the miner, but the Winminer somehow is still not happy and complains that it cannot download the miner (hey buddy, it's been downloaded, just run it!)

How can I make it download, or check what is preventing it from download (I think the Windows Defender blame is just some placeholder for "We have no idea what went wrong but you are running Windows so here's our best guess"), or at least take the files from some working node so the app doesn't try to download.

Many thanks