So when I tried to download the June security quality rollup it said it was replaced by the July rollup which said it was replaced by the August secuirty quality rollup (KB4571736) and so I donwloaded that msu and tried to install - it said searching for installed updates, installing ..., but then after 10 seconds said this update is not applicable to your computer. I attached the cbs log -
If I open windows update from the control panel to try to get just security updates it says no updates installed and windows update has never run. So that is why I had to use the Microsoft Update catalog to manually download. This is a windows 2012 server essentials (not R2) - so it falls in with the windows 8 updates sections and you have to look carefully to see that the update applies to windows server 2012 on those pages - which I did