The MFBE procedure developed by Strumberger (1997 Nucl. Fusion37 19) is used to provide an improved starting point for free boundary equilibrium computations in the case of W7-X (Nührenberg and Zille 1986 Phys. Lett. A 114 129) using the Princeton iterative equilibrium solver (PIES) code (Reiman and Greenside 1986 Comput. Phys. Commun.43 157). Transferring the consistent field found by the variational moments equilibrium code (VMEC) (Hirshmann and Whitson 1983 Phys. Fluids26 3553) to an extended coordinate system using the VMORPH code, a safe margin between plasma boundary and PIES domain is established. The new EXTENDER_P code implements a generalization of the virtual casing principle, which allows field extension both for VMEC and PIES equilibria. This facilitates analysis of the 5/5 islands of the W7-X standard case without including them in the original PIES computation.